Chuck VS The Sleepers
by Neale
Summary: This is obviously AU, a try at a different origin story for, well, most of them. The story is continued in New Kids On The Block
1. Chapter 1

**Anonymous 'reviews' will be deleted, if you want to make a comment about me or the story, do it as yourself so people know who you are, not some pathetic troll hiding behind anonymity. Yes 'Not Mark', I am referring to people like you because I'm sure that you're lying when you say you don't have an account here, though if that was what you really regard as being 'respectful' it isn't hard to see why you'd want to hide behind 'anonymous reviews'. What made you keep coming back to check and comment on the notes I put in that same chapter when there obviously wasn't anything that you liked there? If you believe that you have a point, post it as yourself for everyone to see, otherwise 'just go away'.**

 **This may be my swansong, I don't know. I realise that I may sound like the boy who cried wolf, I has seriously considering packing it in, but then I had this idea and decided that I wanted to try it out.**

 **NB: This _'foreign dialogue'_ is used to depict when the characters are speaking in a foreign language. For that matter, this 'thinking' is used to depict the character's internal dialogue.**

 **Usual disclaimers, no rights to any characters portrayed, and this isn't the real world, all make believe folks.**

Lubyanka Building – November 1980

Two men and two women sat nervously in the waiting room on the third floor of the Lubyanka Building as they waited to be called into Comrade Kryuchkov's office, one of the women was anxiously calling to the little girl, hardly more than a toddler, who was running around the waiting room to try and get her to come and sit quietly, _'Eleonora,_ _Eleonora, please_ _come here my sweet.'_ The other woman smiled fondly at the little girl, as she would love to have a family, but her work for the Committee for State Security was making that unlikely, as most men she met were like the operative who was sitting beside her, arrogant and with an overblown opinion of himself.

She'd been the first to arrive, so she had heard the others' names as they announced themselves, the man sitting beside her was Jacek Burski, while the other two were apparently a couple, Stefan and Maria Bartkowski, and she was Emma Burdon. This posed a question, why had four Polish people, apparently two operatives and two analysts because that other woman did NOT look like she worked in an office, been called here to have a meeting with the Head of Intelligence for the First Chief Directorate of KGB?

Emma didn't have to ponder that question for long, because just after Maria managed to get her little girl settled on her lap, the box on the secretary's desk squawked and they heard the order to send them in. When they were all in the office, they were waved to seats and the secretary was brusquely ordered out of the room. Comrade Kryuchkov looked at them and said _'_ _I_ _t is my_ _understand_ _ing_ _that y_ _ou all speak English_ _fluently_ _, yes?'_ When everyone answered in the affirmative he went on in that language "Good, we will speak it from now on!"

"You have been called here because your State needs you. Your superiors have assured me that you are the most capable people we have who will be able to blend into and operate in an English speaking environment. Are you prepared to do what is necessary to serve the State in America?" After another round of emphatic affirmatives he went on.

"Good! As you can see, the Bartkowskis are already a couple with a delightful little girl…." He tried to smile at Eleonora, but he made it look so painful that he frightened her with his expression and she hid her face in her mother's blouse. He frowned at that and turned to the others to speak brusquely. "Comrade Burski, Comrade Burdon, are you prepared to also operate as a married couple to fulfil your duties?" Jacek Burski swept an appreciative look over Emma's form and responded enthusiastically "Yes, Comrade Director!" Emma was rather quieter and more reserved when she said '"Yes, Comrade Director."

Comrade Kryuchkov nodded and went on "Good! We already have operatives in America, but we have recently lost some of them, and it has been decided that to ensure our operations there can continue without interruption, we must have additional personnel established over there to support the operatives who are currently establishing themselves and also to cover for other possible losses." He looked down at the paper and then back up at the Bartkowskis "Stefan Filip Bartkowski, you will be Stephen Philip Jaworski, Maria Elzbieta Bartkowski, you will be Mary Elizabeth Jaworski and your daughter Eleonora Klara Bartkowski will be Eleanor Clara Jaworski."

He had another look down before looking at the other pair "Comrade Burski, as Comrade Burdon is being sent for her skills as a controller and information analyst rather than an operative, and she has not had the same training to adopt other identities that you have, you will be using her name for your identities. So Jacek Henryk Burski, you will be Jack Henry Burdon, and Emma Lesia Burdon, you will be Emma Lisa Burdon."

"Are there any questions on this?" They all shook their heads "No, Comrade Director."

He nodded "Good! You will only be in contact with two of our operatives in America, they are operating under the names of Diane Beckman and Roan Montgomery. These operatives have been established in America for some years now and they have successfully gained entrance into the American Intelligence community. Comrade Beckman went through the Air Force Reserve Officers Training Corps to become an Air Force officer, and was assigned to their Air Force Intelligence Unit before being transferred into their National Security Agency, she has been climbing the ranks in the NSA since then. Comrade Montgomery also completed his degrees there and was assimilated into the university culture so…."

Comrade Kryuchkov frowned as he read what was in the report in front of him, but looked up and continued abruptly "He has been successful at getting himself recruited into their Central Intelligence Agency and is establishing his position there quite well, so we have operatives in place in both of their premier intelligence agencies. These operatives are not the only ones we have in America, but they are the only ones that you will know about. Due to the sensitive nature of their placements, you are not to attempt to contact either of these operatives directly, you will be provided with indirect communications channels but the ONLY direct contact will be initiated by them."

"These two operatives are located around the Americans' centre of operations in Washington, but to ensure that your presence does not compromise their established covers, you will initially be established across the country, in California." He looked at 'Jack Burdon' "Comrade Burdon, you and your 'wife' will be located in San Diego and you are to secure employment as a contractor in the United States Marines and Navy bases there. If required you will collect the information you are instructed to by your 'wife' as she will be in charge of the operation, and you may be required to assist the Jaworskis as well."

He looked at Ema "Comrade Burdon, you will be the controller for the Jaworskis as well as your 'husband' and handle the information that they obtain. You will maintain the cover of being lifelong friends with Mrs Jaworski to explain your staying in close contact with them." Ema nodded "Yes, Comrade Director."

He then looked at 'Stephen Jaworski' "Comrade Jaworski, you and your family will be located in Los Angeles. If possible, you are to secure employment at the Los Angeles Air Force Base so that you can get access to the secure computer systems there, if this is not possible you and your wife will have the lists of alternate targets. Your wife will have authority over your operation in Los Angeles, but you are authorised to continue to operate as you have previously due to the successes of your previous operations together."

He looked around the group "Are there any questions?" "No. Comrade Director!"

"Very well, you will be provided with the instructions, paperwork and equipment to carry out your operations and then you will be flown to Mexico. In Mexico you will be supplied with cars and whatever else you need to drive across the border into America as though you are just returning from a vacation in Mexico. You will notify Comrades Beckman and Montgomery via the channels provided once you are established and wait for them to contact you. Good luck comrades, this will be a long and difficult assignment, but you will serving your state as few citizens can."

They all returned his salute at that and shuffled out of his office.

* * *

The four operatives spent much of the time that they were preparing for their insertion into America for their operation getting to know one another, because their cover as close friends would require them to have intimate knowledge of each other, especially the two women, and they needed to ensure that they had the variations of their stories for their cover lives down by rote. One thing that quickly became obvious was that the focus of this operation was on Stephen and Emma, as Stephen was a technology expert that the State was relying on to steal American secrets and Emma was one of, if not the, best controllers and information analysts that the First Chief Directorate had.

Mary was one of the First Chief Directorate's top operatives (THE best if the legends about her were at all true), and she'd been assigned to work with Stephen on previous operations. Their working relationship and results on these operations were good enough for their superiors to allow them to continue their relationship when it came out that they were involved and she was pregnant with Eleanor. Jack was also a highly capable operative, so he was angry when it came out that the only reason that he'd been selected for this operation was to complement and protect Emma, as she was the controller for the operation.

The discussions they were having did answer the question that had been going through Emma's mind about why four Polish people had been selected when they were waiting to be called into Comrade Kryuchkov's office though, as Mary told them stories about other operatives being caught out when they slipped up and spoke Russian on a mission, but speaking Polish apparently didn't raise the same suspicion, especially in America where they had so many Polish immigrants.

* * *

California - December 1980

A month after their meeting with Comrade Kryuchkov, the two couples were in place in San Diego and Los Angeles, and the two men began working on securing the employment that they'd been instructed to. Of course, when the Jaworskis had to send a notification a couple of months later through the channels that had been established that they'd discovered that Mary was pregnant again, they fully expected to be reprimanded, and possibly be recalled or ordered to terminate the pregnancy, but they got quite a surprise. The response that came back from their superiors stated that the purpose of their assignment there was to settle in for the long haul, and so an established family was expected to solidify their cover. They couldn't quite believe that they'd escaped reprimand for slipping up with the birth control the way they had, but they weren't about to argue.

When they looked into trying to get Stephen into the Los Angeles Air Force Base, Stephen, Mary and Emma agreed that their supplied backgrounds weren't solid enough when they first arrived to be assured that they'd hold up to the security checks that they expected for a sensitive installation like that. Stephen therefore went with a safer choice, getting a job in the research projects at the California Institute of Technology, or Caltech as they called it. The security checks at Caltech were considerably less that they would have been at Los Angeles Air Force Base, but many of the projects they worked on had military and other government connections, so working there should help to build the case for him to get a serious security clearance.

Successes there would also help in building his credibility and increase the chance of him being approached for more sensitive roles. This actually happened far more quickly than they'd expected, because Stephen had only been on a couple of successful projects for Caltech before he was poached for a government technology project. The subject matter of this project and the way it was being handled made them rather suspicious, so they sent coded messages with all the relevant details through the established channels to Beckman and Montgomery, and sure enough Montgomery came back with confirmation that the people concerned were part of the CIA.

The real win that they had on this though, was that the person running this project, an imposing black man by the name of Langston Graham, was apparently desperate to get results. This meant that when they heard the glowing reports about Stephen's results on the other projects he'd been associated with, they did little more than cursory background checks on him, Mary and the Burdons (as their close friends) before they brought him into the project.

'Jack Burdon' made no attempt to secure the contractor roles that he'd been instructed to. He'd been put out when he discovered that an operative of his standing was not in charge of this operation, and if anything he had the least authority of any of them. Because of that, and the fact that he considered the contractor work he was expected to do beneath him, he used the same argument about his background not holding up to security checks as they'd used for Stephen (even though there was little validity in his case) and didn't even attempt to gain employment at the firms providing contractors to the Marine and Navy bases. Instead, he got himself a job as a salesman for one of the major suppliers of the Marine and Navy bases, arguing that he could get as much access that way as he would have otherwise. They all knew that this argument was baseless, but as he'd already done it without consulting Emma there was nothing that they could do about it without exposing the operation that they were trying to get established.

* * *

Los Angeles - August 1981

As Mary's pregnancy progressed, her mobility was becoming more restricted and lengthy car trips were becoming more uncomfortable for her, so the Burdons drove up to Los Angeles once or twice a month to see them. It was more logical for them to be the ones doing these trips anyway, as the training that Jack had as an operative had made it a simple matter for him to be a very successful salesman, so they had a lot more money and free time to travel between San Diego and Los Angeles than the Jaworskis did with Stephen's government research job.

While they were up there with the Jaworskis, Jack observed Emma as she doted on the Jaworskis' daughter and hovered around Mary when she was pregnant, noting that there was more talk of children than there was about the operation that they'd been sent to America for half the time, and an idea formed in his head. As he'd noted in their initial meeting in Comrade Kryuchkov's office, Emma was a fine looking woman and he was all for embracing their cover as man and wife, but she was reluctant to engage in sexual relations, only giving in when he really pressed her for it. With his flexible schedules and operative's training, he had no trouble finding the opportunities to charm other women into bed when he wanted, but he wanted her to be a more active partner in this, if they were going to be here as man and wife for an extended period he wanted much more participation from her.

Watching the way she was with the Jaworski girl, he thought that he knew the way to do that now. The woman obviously wanted children of her own, and they'd already had confirmation from their superiors that they believed that children strengthened their covers in a long term operation of this nature, so it shouldn't be too hard to convince her that people were asking questions about why they didn't have any children and use that to get her to stop her birth control and engage in a lot more sex.

Jack was pleased to see that he'd read Emma correctly, and within a month she'd given in and the sex life at home was much more to his liking. He was less pleased when his plan backfired (or worked, depending on your point of view) and she found that she was pregnant a few months after that, but at least with the hormones kicking in when she was pregnant, she was more interested in sex.

Their trips to Los Angeles increased to at least once a week as Mary drew closer to her due date, and Emma ended up staying with the Jaworskis for a few weeks before and after the birth to look after Eleanor and Mary, but Jack found that he didn't mind that much, as she was broody and unresponsive with her worry about Mary and the baby, so her being away left him free to entertain other women.

Karol Filip Bartkowski, or rather Charles Philip Jaworski as the official records showed, was born hale and hearty, and with a good set of lungs as they could hear him all the way down the hall. His parents and sister were totally enthralled with him, and Emma wasn't much better. Mary took in the look of longing on Emma's face and smiled as she reached out to gently touch her still unseen baby bump "It won't be much longer for you Em, I just hope that our children can be as close as we've become."

Emma smiled and covered Mary's hand with her own, quickly looking around before she answered in Polish _'For all of it_ _start_ _ing_ _as only_ _a cover friendship, you_ _ARE_ _the best friend I've had all my life Maria!'_ Mary smiled again and responded in the same language _'You are the same to me Emma, and we have a better life here than we had back in the old country.'_ Stephen leant in to hug the two women with a smile, while keeping an eye on Eleanor who was sitting up on the bed cradling her baby brother in her arms.

Emma had been a little angry when Jack sent a message to say that he couldn't get away from work to come up for the baby's birth, as she knew that he would in fact be busy playing around with other women, but in truth none of them missed him that much as he hadn't made any effort to become part of the group beyond what was required to support their cover.

When Mary was back on her feet and able to look after her family, Emma went back to San Diego, but they still had to come up every two weeks at least, because most of the information that they were getting was from the CIA project that Stephen was working on. Jack wasn't getting anything but troop and ship movements from the Marine and Navy bases, and most of that wasn't important enough to send back to their superiors.

Less than six months later, Mary went to San Diego to look after Emma, taking Eleanor and Charles with her. Her reaction to a half serious suggestion from Jack when he was drunk that he could do with some looking after as well ensured that he stayed clear of her until she went back to Los Angeles, and whenever they saw each other after that. Having Mary there was what got Emma through the birth as Jack was hardly playing the role of the doting husband well, but disappointment with him was forgotten when her daughter was born. Samanta Lesia Burdon, or Samantha Lisa Burdon for the official record, was born beautiful and perfect, and from that moment she was the whole world for her mother.

Emma knew that, unlike Jack, Stephen was telling the complete truth when he told her on the phone that he wanted to be there for her baby's birth, but he couldn't get away, because Mary had told her about the threat that had been made to have him locked up if he tried to leave Los Angeles. The upset and wishful tone in his voice as he told her this and wished her all the best was both heartwarming and heartbreaking, and she tried to let him know how much that meant to her.

As Emma had with her, Mary and her children stayed until she was back on her feet and able to look after herself and her baby and then they headed back to Los Angeles. After Emma made it clear that it would be some time, if ever, before she'd be ready to go back to the type of sexual activity that they'd had before Samantha was born, Jack progressively withdrew more and more from her and the operation that they'd been inserted into America for.

* * *

San Diego - February 1983

Unfortunately, the situation was much the same as it had been when he ignored his orders to secure employment as a contractor on the military bases, in that they couldn't take action against him without exposing their operation. While they couldn't force him to fulfil his duty though, they COULD ensure that he didn't do anything to compromise their covers, and a very direct threat from Mary about what would happen to him if he did anything of the sort did that quite well.

Before they left Russia, he'd asked around about the people he was being inserted into this operation with, and the stories he'd heard about Królowa Mrózu, the Frost Queen, had chilled his blood. All that came back to him as she transfixed him with a look and told him that if he did anything to put the rest of them and their children at risk, no matter where he ran to, she'd track him down and kill him very slowly and painfully, so he had no doubt that she'd do exactly as she said!

His terror grew when he thought of that stupid crack he'd made to her about her 'looking after him', he may have been drunk at the time but what had he been thinking? Propositioning one of the most lethal women on the planet, who also happened to be very married, and a close personal friend of his cover wife? Had he been so taken in by watching her play a wife and mother for over a year and a half that he'd forgotten what she really was?

Jack was on his best behaviour for a while after that, going out and replacing the rickety old car that Emma drove with a new car that would be much safer for her and the baby and making an effort to keep his philandering under wraps to avoid upsetting her, but he kept drawing away from them and the operation. The part that upset Emma the most was that he showed almost no interest in their daughter, making it all too obvious that to him she was merely an unexpected and unwanted by-product of the sex that he'd been soliciting from her with his talk of having children.

Given that their home life was now even more of a sham than it had been before, Emma took Samantha up to Los Angeles at least two or three times a week, she'd work on their operation with Mary, and Stephen if he was home, and their children would play together. Charles and Samantha were inseparable, they effectively grew up together until they started school, and even then they still saw each other every weekend, until the incident.

* * *

San Diego - June 1985

Ever since Samantha's birth, Jack had been slipping further and further away from his duties to the operation. The information that he was supplying from the military bases had been tapering off for a while, but that hadn't created issues with their superiors as there was never really anything of note coming from his reports. When the information stopped altogether though, and Emma asked him why, he brusquely told her that he'd quit his job so he wasn't going onto the military bases any more. Emma just looked at him in disbelief, then left the room to go and call Mary to tell her about what he'd done, and she wasn't really surprised when Mary arrived within an hour and a half.

Faced with Królowa Mrózu, Jack quickly buckled and told the full story, one of the women he was sleeping with had convinced him that he could make far more money as a con artist than he could as a salesman, and she was right, he'd made more in a few months than he could in years as a salesman, so he'd given up the salesman's job. When Mary called him an idiot, he got hot under the collar and shouted at her that no-one had paid any attention to those reports since they started anyway.

In a matter of seconds, he was being held up against the wall with a knife to his throat as she asked, choosing her words carefully as if she was talking to a simple child, "Have you forgotten who we work for? Yes, those reports were probably filed away without anyone looking at them, but they'd notice soon enough that they were no longer getting them, because that's what bureaucrats do!" She looked down at the puddle on the floor beneath him with distaste, then looked him in the eye and told him that it was up to him to make sure that he still got that information for them to send through.

Jack breathed a sigh of relief as she turned away, but froze as she spun back and put the point of the knife to his eye, as she hissed "Do not even think about trying to make up that information! If they ever found out that we'd been feeding them false information we'd all be placed at risk, need I need to remind you what I will do to you if that happens because of you?" "No Mary!"

"Right then, keep getting that information from all the bases and feeding it through, and make sure that you don't do anything to expose the rest of us when you do it. As long as you do that, keep providing for Emma and Samantha as we expect you to, and make an effort to at least pretend to be a good father to Samantha, we'll let you pursue your career as a con artist, but just remember what will happen to you if fail to deliver on even one of these requirements, do you understand what your requirements are?" "Yes Mary!"

Mary turned and walked away in disgust again, but this time kept going, changing into a happy 'Aunt' figure when she picked up Sammie and had an excited conversation with her 'niece' about the little girl's marvellous discoveries of the day.

Jack's fear of Mary ensured that he tried to deliver everything that was required of him, but Emma had to plan and organise his cons for him to ensure that he could keep up with the requirement to provide for them properly, because with him flying by the seat of his pants as he tended to do, his success rate was barely 50%, if that. The problem was that, if Mary killed him as she so wanted to, it would derail whole their operation because they wouldn't be able to keep up the pretence that their close friends the Burdons were a happy family in San Diego, and if that happened the CIA would discover their secret sooner or later. What this meant was that she had to keep Jack's cons successful and keep him living there with her and Sammie for their operation, and their friendship, to continue the way that they wanted it to, which was why she helped him.

* * *

San Diego - November 1989

This continued until November in eighty nine, when Sammie was seven. That was when Jack's ego and showing off to try and impress some woman led to him totally screwing up a big con. When the con fell apart, Jack ran off and hid without telling Emma what had happened, and he'd left a trail leading straight home to Emma and Sammie, so she had no warning before the FBI and ATF agents descended on their house. Emma didn't have time to do any more than call Mary and say "Feds!" before they broke in.

By the time that Mary managed to get to San Diego, Emma was already in custody somewhere, and Jack had disappeared with Sammie. When she got back to Los Angeles, she tried to contact Beckman and Montgomery, but as she eventually found out, they'd both been in Berlin, tied up in the middle of the activities that led to the inevitable downfall of the Berlin Wall at the time.

On top of that, as soon as the name Emma Burdon showed up on the federal alert systems in regard to her being arrested by the FBI, Graham had all the security around his project and the Jaworski family locked down, and once he had them under lock down conditions he kept them there, so Mary couldn't get away from Los Angeles to hunt for Jack and Sammie (to kill Jack and recover Sammie), or try to find and rescue Emma.

What Beckman and Montgomery determined had happened when they finally returned to the United States and had a chance to look into it was that Jack had come out of hiding and collected Sammie from school some time between when Emma called Mary, and Mary had managed to reach San Diego. Mary had been delayed because she was forced to keep to something like the speed limit during the day to avoid being pulled over every ten miles. Jack had taken whatever money he could get his hands on without being caught and sold his car, then used a series of cabs to get to where he'd apparently had another car stashed. The only good news they got out of this was that everyone who had seen them said that the little girl was fine.

Beckman and Montgomery were tied up in Europe for another four to five months after the incident and then it took them nearly nine months to locate Emma and organise her release in early ninety one after they returned. This meant that Emma ended up spending over a year in a Federal prison, because she'd refused to offer any defence on the charges she was put up on in an attempt to ensure that she didn't lead anyone to Mary and her family.

* * *

Graham kept Stephen and Mary locked down so tight that they'd barely managed to get the message from Beckman and Montgomery that they had located Emma and were working on her release without being exposed themselves, or so they'd thought. The problem was that Emma's getting arrested had set off alarm bells with Graham, and that started him wondering about what else they'd missed regarding these people, so unbeknownst to them he'd used every bit of authority he had to thoroughly investigate all of them, and everything they'd done for the past ten years too.

This was the type of investigation that they'd been dreading when they first arrived in America, because the CIA had the resources to pull just about everything apart and find their secrets, well their secrets in America anyway. That was how Graham's people started finding the small irregularities in their records and indications of their secret communications with other parties, and they also saw when they received that message to say that Emma had been found.

Graham's people couldn't crack the codes of the message, but to Graham that was immaterial, the fact that they were communicating that way was proof to him that they were involved in something bigger, so he started casting a wider net. It was when he started hearing tales of a legendary spy couple, Królowa Mrózu and Myśliwy, the Frost Queen and the Hunter, who'd suddenly vanished about eight or nine years before that he thought that he was getting somewhere, because from those stories, the Hunter was supposed to be some sort of technological genius. Of course, the stories about the Frost Queen were a problem, as she was supposed to be some sort of rampaging Valkyrie who was unstoppable.

That did not suit Graham at all, because he knew that his project wouldn't get anywhere without Jaworski, it had only really taken off when he'd brought him on-board, but he couldn't afford to leave a wild card like this Frost Queen there, as she'd take Jaworski and run as soon as they realised that they'd been made. He also knew that he couldn't openly have the wife killed or thrown into prison, because Jaworski would just refuse to do anything if that happened. Graham was wracking his brain, trying to come up with a plan, and then he remembered a demonstration that the team had given him just before Jaworski came on-board.

* * *

Los Angeles - April 1990

The powers that be had vetoed and squashed the idea when it was demonstrated because it was essentially instant brainwashing, overwriting a person's personality and memories with the image that they were imprinted with, and they were afraid of the backlash that would occur if anyone ever found out that they'd been experimenting with anything like that. The persona that they had to load into someone had also been pretty frightening, because for some reason the head case who wrote it had created the image of a psychopathic Russian arms dealer, and then loaded it into himself to demonstrate it. That was when they'd found that there was no way of reversing this, so that guy was going to spend the rest of his life locked away in a rubber room.

This was all adding up to something that Graham could see as possibly working in the current situation though, because even though he'd been ordered to destroy it, he still had the equipment to imprint someone else with this Agent-X persona as they'd called it and create another Alexei Volkoff locked away. The beauty of it was that, unless he'd told anyone else about it, there was only one other person still on the team who knew anything about it, the British scientist Hartley Winterbottom, who just so happened to be a good friend of the Jaworskis. So if, say, he imprinted himself with this program and went into Russia on a mission, and then the CIA decided that they couldn't risk sending any agents in to extract him, they'd have to find someone else willing to go in and deactivate the program and bring him out. Yes, this could just work, especially if they re-wrote the Królowa Mrózu legend as CIA Agent Frost and then tipped off Volkoff that the CIA was sending an assassin after him, giving him hints about where to find the information on her.

It took some time for Graham to set all of this up and get 'Agent Frost's records inserted into the CIA's systems, so it was well into July in ninety before he called Winterbottom in to talk to him about the Agent-X program. As soon as Winterbottom assured him that he'd never said a word to anyone about that disgusting program, Graham said "Good!" and shot him with a modified tranq dart that left him fully conscious, but with no control over his motor functions. He could see in Winterbottom's eyes that he recognised the apparatus that was used to imprint someone with the Agent-X persona, and he smiled at him maliciously, saying "Goodbye Hartley!" as he fitted the apparatus onto him.

As soon as he was imprinted with Agent-X, Graham had Winterbottom, or rather, Volkoff, sedated and flown to Moscow. Only then did he go to the Jaworskis and tell them in a panic that Hartley had apparently been approached by the CIA and had agreed to imprint this persona and go into Russia on a mission, but after he'd gone in, the CIA people who sent him in changed their minds and decided that they couldn't risk sending an agent in to deactivate the program and get him out, so he could be stuck in there playing a Russian arms dealer until someone finished him off. It was obvious to anyone in the room how worried Stephen Jaworski was about his friend and that Mary Jaworski would do anything to relieve his worry, so Graham 'accidentally' let slip where the device to deactivate the program was, and told them that the security was being brought back to what it had been now that the danger seemed to be past.

Hartley Winterbottom was a brilliant man, and changing into 'Alexei Volkoff' hadn't diminished that in any way, but it did make him a totally ruthless and amoral character who had no qualms about doing whatever it took to get what he wanted. A brilliant psychopath is a very dangerous thing and he went through Moscow's Underworld like a tornado, taking control of much of it and gathering a large following of those who could see how powerful he would become in a matter of weeks.

Graham was patting himself on the back when the 'removal' device disappeared, closely followed by Mary Jaworski, as Volkoff had already been sent the the word about the 'CIA Assassin' Frost and been given hints about where to find the information on her. When he hadn't heard anything about her being eliminated within a week though, he sent one of his minions in to get proof of her death. He was NOT happy when the man came back to tell him that she wasn't dead, and in fact she seemed to be a fixture at Volkoff's side, his most trusted aide. Frustrated by that news, Graham sent the man back in with a file on Mary's husband and children, in an effort to prove to Volkoff that she was playing him because she had a family back in America, that was the last Graham heard of that lackey.

* * *

Los Angeles - August 1990

Being frustrated that he couldn't get proof of Mary Jaworski's death didn't stop Graham from trying to use it to crush Stephen Jaworski and get him to immerse himself in his work, though, and he once again put on a wonderful acting job as he told Stephen that he'd heard that Volkoff had killed an American Assassin, a woman, who'd gone in after him, saying that the CIA had apparently been trying to clean up the mess it made. He knew that Stephen would presume that Mary was was the one who'd been killed because she'd gone in to deactivate Volkoff's Agent-X program and extract Hartley once it was out of him. Stephen did a pretty fair acting job as well, as he did a very good rendition of a man who was crushed, even though Montgomery had gotten word to them via Ellie (they'd realised that their best chance of talking to anyone without being seen was if someone had a quick word with Ellie at her school) that Mary was alive and well, as she'd gotten Volkoff to confirm her identity as Królowa Mrózu through the First Chief Directorate of KGB. Stephen was still a man on the edge though because the word that came back also said that Mary couldn't get out as Volkoff had apparently decided that she was the only person he could trust, so he wouldn't let her leave his side.

They'd also gotten word out about the state that Volkoff was in and the fact that the extraction program didn't work, so Stephen was frantic, and an unstable genius being frantic is very rarely a good thing because they have a tendency to take things to the wrong, and usually disastrous, conclusion, just as Stephen did this time.

Stephen decided that the only way to get free to go after Mary so that he could extract her from Volkoff's world was to finish Graham's Intersect project so he'd release him. To do that Stephen worked frantically day and night on the Intersect code, and his children, especially Ellie, were getting more and more worried as he was retreating further into his own little world all the time. Ellie realised that their mother had been the only one who could keep their father grounded, and without her he was lost at sea. (Off with the pixies wouldn't have been a bad description either.)

As Ellie feared, their father just got worse and worse, and about a month after Charlie's ninth birthday, Stephen made a grave error, two actually. Charlie was quite mature for his age, but he WAS barely nine, and he was hurting because in the space of the last eleven months or so, he'd lost Sammie and Auntie Em when they'd disappeared, then his mother had disappeared and now his father was gone as well, even though he was physically there, so he'd had most of his world stripped from him, all he had left was Ellie. One night his father came out of his work room, but when Charlie tried to talk to him, he just brushed him off and went off to do something, leaving the door of the workroom open. Charlie decided to see what was in there that was so much more important than they were and went in. There was all sorts of interesting equipment in the room, but what caught his eye was an array of screens that had been stacked up on a desk. When he went over to look at it, it had a blinking 'Activate' prompt on the screen, so he angrily hit the 'Enter' key out of spite. Images started flashing on the screens and that was the last thing he remembered until he came around to find his father clinging to him, crying and raving that he'd destroyed his son, until Charlie asked him what was wrong?

Stephen checked him over as best he could and was amazed and thankful that he HADN'T destroyed his son as he'd believed. Then he made his second, and far more serious, error, as he decided that this showed that this version must be save to use as Charles had loaded it with out any apparent detrimental effects. Stephen decided then that he could use this version of the Intersect to accelerate the process to finish the Intersect Project and be free to recover Mary, so he loaded it, but even though it was obvious that it hit him far harder than it had Charles, he persisted in loading extra databases into it and trying to use it. As he did that, he started deteriorating frighteningly quickly, so it was left to Ellie to try and hold their family together, and as mature as she was, that was just too much for a twelve year old girl.

* * *

Los Angeles - January 1991

Beckman and Montgomery organised people to see her every day at school, to give her news about her mother and do what they could to help her while they tried to get Emma out of prison so that she could come back and take the reins (they didn't quite know HOW she was going to do that, given that she wouldn't be able to show her face, but they knew she'd be the best person for the job). This dragged on for about four months, and then one day the person Ellie found waiting for her at the usual meeting place was Auntie Em and she broke down, because the only person she needed to see more than Auntie Em was her mother.

Emma had changed her hair colour and other aspects of her appearance and they'd got her a new identity and a job at the school, so from then on, it was Auntie Em who was seeing Ellie every day and helping her deal with her father slipping ever further from reality, trying to help Charlie handle imminent puberty, managing the family's finances, cooking, cleaning and all the other things that a thirteen year old girl shouldn't have to deal with, even if she is a genius. Emma also saw Charlie as much as she could, at least their school had elementary and middle school together, which made things easier.

* * *

Los Angeles - December 1991

At the end of ninety one, they had another problem (on top of Stephen's rampant slide into dementia), as the KGB had been helping them keep the channels open to Mary so they knew what was happening with her, but with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the KGB was disbanded, and when it was, they all effectively disappeared because they'd been a rather unofficial part of the KGB, so they ceased to exist when it did. They all wanted Mary to get out of that world, but she argued that she couldn't leave until Stephen and the children had disappeared as Volkoff would come after them if she did.

Eventually they agreed to compromise, Emma would take Ellie and Charlie and disappear, and then Mary would come to them. If they could grab Stephen when Mary returned without putting the rest of them at risk they would, otherwise he'd have to fend for himself for a while. Emma had to use the argument that she needed Mary to help her find Sammie to get her to she agree to the plan, as that was the only one that could sway her, both women were determined to save their children, all of them.

Eleanor and Charles Jaworski disappeared at the end of ninety one, while Ellie and Chuck Bartowski came to live with their Aunt, Emma Burton, down towards the other end of Los Angeles at the same time. The birthday present that Ellie got in February ninety two was one she'd remember as the best present of her life, because their mother walked back into their lives. She'd actually arrived in Los Angeles about a week earlier, but she'd had to take that time to try and pull herself together after spending over a year and a half in that madman's world, and she was hoping that her children would forgive her for the theatrics of coming home on Ellie's fourteenth birthday.

Once Mary was home (as Mary Bartowski, because they were banking on Stephen being able to find them with something so close to their real name if/when he got his head straightened out, but no-one else should be able to recognise the name), they started concentrating on locating Sammie, and her bastard of her father. The problem was that they had limited resources without any organisation behind them now and Emma, well all of them really, was becoming more and more despondent when it seemed that every possible lead just turned out to be a dead end. One thing that they DID know, however, was that none of them would ever stop looking for Sammie.

They kept their connections to Beckman and Montgomery, as they had the same issues as Mary and Emma did, in that any record of their old roles, and their entire identities actually, had ceased to exist with the KGB. Beckman and Montgomery were faced with an interesting quandary now, they'd spent over half their lives getting established in the United States and gaining entry into their intelligence community to serve the U.S.S.R. but now, just as they were getting into positions of power, the U.S.S.R. had ceased to exist, and so had any record of their existence prior to where they started in the United States. The question facing them was what to do? Disappear into the hills (or city somewhere) and start a new live? Or take the lives that they'd carved out with their own blood, sweat and tears and run with them?

They knew that Beckman had come to a decision when she asked them to come to D.C. for a meeting about a job. Both Mary and Emma were cautious about accepting, and they'd be taking every possible measure to ensure that they didn't get caught in anyone's trap, but they were optimistic as they didn't really believe that it was a trap.

 **A/N: As they're coming clean as to who they are down the track, I thought it was time to correct the Polish names here as per Xpl's advice, so I'm using the right names down the track, though I may stuff up the Russian names ;^)  
**


	2. Glasnost

**There are references to upsetting subjects such as hate crimes and sexual assault in this chapter that people may not want to read. There are also references to homosexuality, so people who are against that may not want to read either.**

 **Usual disclaimers, no rights to any characters portrayed and this ain't the real world.**

Washington - March 1992

When Mary walked into the restaurant with Emma and her children, she wasn't too surprised to find that there were two people waiting for them in the private room that they were escorted to. Just to observe the protocols one last time, both sides went through the old challenges and responses, and then Mary looked at the little redhead quizzically "I'm sorry Miss Beckman, I'm not sure what your rank is any more?"

The woman looked back at her "It's still Major, actually, but I'd prefer it if this was a Diane conversation Mrs?"

"Bartowski, but please call me Mary."

Diane smiled her thanks, and looking at the others she asked "And these are?"

Mary smiled and said "Ellie and Chuck" as she touched her daughter and son on the shoulder.

Emma nodded to her, just saying "Emma."

Diane's smile faded as she faced her "I so wish that Samantha were here with us today, too, Emma, I promise that we won't stop looking for her until we get her back."

Emma nodded again with a tear in her eye, saying "Thank you Diane, I can assure you that we won't either!"

Roan Montgomery squeezed Diane's shoulder and said "Please have a seat ladies, and Chuck, and please call me Roan."

The others took their seats and Roan stood, waving to a side table where an array of beverages were displayed, asking what everyone would like. When the women had glasses of wine, Ellie and Chuck had soft drinks and he had something that looked a little harder in front of him, he took his seat and raised his glass "To Glasnost!"

They all raised their glasses and repeated the toast, then they began talking. Roan handed over to Diane because this was her idea, and she was the one who was going to have to sell it.

She started out hesitantly "The reason that I wanted to speak to you today was that, well Roan and I have been discussing our options. We all know that our previous lives have disappeared completely…." The other women nodded "and we have to build new lives for ourselves now. Roan and I have managed to hang onto our status in this world while you have not, but I know better than most that I'm in the presence of greatness, and that the Frost Queen and the Fox are more than worthy of their fame! That is why I would like to make a proposition to you, you see I have managed to reach the level in the NSA where I command intelligence groups, and I would like to form a secret group with you, and perhaps the Hunter if he can conquer his current problems, and the next generation as well."

Mary stiffened at that last, but Diane held up a hand, asking her with that to hear her out. "When we were dealing with Ellie while you were trapped in Russia and Emma was in prison, we were astounded by the maturity and brilliance she displayed, before she was even a teenager. Ellie was putting many professionals who prided themselves on their ability to shame. Your daughter is most certainly a credit to you and Stephen Mary, and I have no doubt that Chuck is the same." She looked at Emma "I also have no doubt that your Samantha is just as astounding Emma."

Diane drew a breath, as this was the dicey part of this discussion, she looked at Emma and said "Please hear me out before you respond to what I'm about to say Emma" Emma looked suspicious but nodded.

"The thing is, I was, am, quite serious about the fact that we're not stopping until we find Samantha, I, and Roan, will continue that search with whatever resources we have, but if we are to have a good chance to find her we will need to have SERIOUS resources allocated to the search, and the best chance to get that level of resources is if I'm heading up a successful intelligence group. That's why I'm proposing a secret group that includes all of you, because with a brain trust made up of this group, we will be able to do great things. THAT is what will give us access to the resources that will help us find Samantha."

Mary and Emma looked at each other and nodded, then Mary looked at her children, and she had to smile at the determination on their faces as they nodded emphatically. She reached out to squeeze Ellie's hand and kissed Chuck on the head before she turned back to Diane "Well it appears that you have the four of us at least Diane, have you planned how to manage this yet?"

Diane smiled ruefully as she shook her head "To tell you the truth, no, I haven't been able to look past getting this far, as I was expecting far more resistance from you about including your remarkable children in this endeavour. Just off the top of my head though, I think that we need to set up a series of identities that all point to each other to ensure that no-one ever discovers your true identities, especially Ellie, Chuck and Samantha when we get her back…."

Emma broke in with "Sammie!"

Diane looked at her "Sorry?"

"Within the family, she's Sammie Diane, and if this is going to work we need to be a family!"

Diane smiled as she nodded "Yes, Ellie, Chuck and Sammie, we'll create cover identities for them that are old enough and have the right backgrounds to fit into the roles that they play, and you'll all have different identities for different functions. People will only deal through me, so none of you, not even you, Mary and Emma, will be dealing directly with anyone else. That will protect your identities and should ward off anyone who may be looking for you within the system, like the CIA."

Roan snorted at that and they all looked at him, he took a sip of his drink and grinned at Mary "Do you know that you're becoming quite a legend in the CIA?"

They all looked down at his drink, wondering how many he'd had, even Diane, but he shook his head. "You know about that Agent Frost identity that Graham made up from the Frost Queen stories?" They all nodded "Well it's still on the CIA systems and more and more people are talking about this legendary agent. The best part though is that when the older agents are asked about Frost, they make up stories about the amazing feats that they did on missions with her, because there's so much hero worship going around about her that the general impression is that if you hadn't worked with her you didn't do serious missions. I had quite a bit of fun recounting my adventures with her…." He caught the narrow eyed look that Mary had fixed on him "No! I never told any of THOSE stories! They would have sullied the legend of the Valkyrie! Though I must admit my stories of fighting at her side served me quite well in that respect." He finished with a smirk and got amused and slightly disgusted looks from the three women. Ellie and Chuck were looking confused and Mary just said "Never mind Sweetie, I'll explain when you're old enough, maybe when you're twenty."

Over dinner, they fleshed out the details of how they were going to put this group together and operate, and Ellie, and even Chuck had some quite good suggestions on that. Diane caught Mary's eye one time after this happened, and Mary nodded with a proud smile in her face to say that she got her point.

After the dinner, Mary, Emma, Ellie and Chuck flew back to L.A. and started preparing for the next stage of their lives. Ellie and Chuck still had something like a decade of education ahead of them, but they'd be working around their school work part time on the assignments that Mary and Emma would be working full time on.

* * *

San Diego - November 1989

The day that everything fell apart, Jack picked up Samantha and collected the money and the car he'd had stashed away for this eventuality and took off, and he didn't stop driving until they were two states away. Samantha was crying for her mother until he shouted at her to stop, but the glint in her eye when she looked at him made him pause, because he could almost see her considering whether there was any way that she could drive the car before she turned away from him and quietly cried herself to sleep. He couldn't shake the idea that if she'd believed that there was any way that she could have managed to drive the car, he would have gotten a knife in the ribs and his body would have been dumped by the roadside while she drove back to San Diego.

When they'd reached El Paso and he thought that they were far enough away to be safe, Jack got them a hotel room, falling into bed as soon as they were in the room. He was woken several hours later by the TV blaring, but swallowed his words halfway through snapping at Samantha to turn it down, because she flashed him a very similar look to what she had in the car, and once again he felt a stab of fear. Samantha turned to face him and said "I want to talk to Mama!"

He looked at her "Well, you can't!"

"Why not?"

"Because she made a mistake and got herself arrested."

"Mama doesn't make mistakes!"

"Obviously she does, because she's been arrested."

"I want to call Auntie Mary and find out what's happened to Mama then."

"No, you can't call anyone, that will just lead the cops or someone else to us and we'll get arrested too."

This formula kept repeating itself for a week, until Sammie managed to get to a phone where she could call home. The fact that there was no answer on their home phone seemed to indicate that at least part of what her father had said was true, but when she tried to call Auntie Mary someone else answered and wanted to know who she was and why she was trying to call the Jaworskis. Sammie quickly hung up the phone before the call could be traced then sat down and cried, because she'd lost everyone who loved her and she was stuck here with her father.

* * *

Even though Jack had collected quite a bit of money before they left San Diego, it didn't take long for it to run out with the way he was throwing it about, so he soon had to try to run another con. It rankled when his seven year old daughter tried to tell him what to do, but Jack reminded himself that her mother was one of, if not THE most brilliant person he'd ever met, a match for Stephen Jaworski, so he swallowed his pride and listened to her. When he did, he discovered that not only had she inherited her mother's brilliance, she'd obviously been learning from her mother and Mary Jaworski, because at seven she already knew a surprising amount about the con game, or at least about the skills she needed to succeed in the con game.

This was the way it went for the next eight years, Samantha took on a bigger role as she grew (under whatever name she was using in that town), but her father was always the front man for their cons, and she'd do the planning and organisation. If he stuck to her plan they'd do well, but if he got greedy or impatient, or his ego made him decide he could do better, well they'd had to run out of town with nothing and start again from scratch more times than she liked to remember.

There had been far too many times since the day her father took her away from everything she loved that Sammie had had cause to be thankful for the training Auntie Mary started when she was growing up with Charlie. From the time they started walking, Auntie Mary had been making games out of the exercises and training she had them do, at first it was running and tumbling, but this progressed quite quickly into athletics and gymnastics and then she started adding in martial arts training, tai chi and other types. When they were little it was all fun games, and it was mostly fun and laughter at that stage, but when she started going to school, Mama and Auntie Mary had explained to her that she needed to keep quiet about the training and not show what she could do, because other people wouldn't understand why she was being trained to protect herself, and they started getting more serious about the training as well.

Mama had looked her in the eye and told her that Auntie Mary did this with Ellie and Charlie to make sure that they were as safe as they could be and that was why she'd agreed for her little princess to be included in the games that weren't games, because she wanted her baby to be safe as well. They'd kept up this training up until the day her father took her away, and Auntie Mary had also taught her how to use knives and other things. After she started school so they could only go up to see Auntie Mary and Charlie on weekends, Mama had been doing the exercises with her every day, and she'd kept doing them every day ever since then. She'd also found other people to teach her more ways of protecting herself over the years as she grew, and she'd expanded her training and exercises to include those things, so those times when men or boys tried to grab her and do things to her, she hurt them, she hurt them bad!

After about eight years of living with and as a con artist, Samantha (or rather Jenny Burton as she was going by then) put her foot down, her education had been spotty at best, a few months here or there under various names, scrabbling to put together believable transcripts to get into the new school each time, and she'd mostly been self taught, but as her father had noted she was definitely smarter than the average bear. She was starting to think about what sort of life she wanted though, and being constantly on the road pulling off petty cons (OK, they'd made millions at times, but whenever they did that her father just went and blew it so they'd have to go out again and organise their next con) WASN'T it. In today's world, if you wanted a decent life you needed a decent degree, and to have a chance to get that she needed to stay in one place for the last year of high school.

She gave her father an ultimatum, he could settle down and go straight for a year to give her a chance to get the credentials she needed to get herself into a decent degree, or they would part ways permanently and he'd be on his own from now on. Jack wasn't an idiot, he knew that Samantha was quite capable of finding a nice family who would take her in and support her for her final year of school, and he also knew that he could never do anywhere near as well without her, so he agreed to her demands.

* * *

Arcadia - February 1992

The location for the home that Ellie and Chuck lived in with their mother and 'Aunt' had been selected to ensure that it was well within the Arcadia school district, because the schools there were the best rated in California, and among the best rated in the country. Ellie and Chuck also enjoyed going to school there because they could learn more than they had at their old schools. Of course by then they both knew the drill, that it was safer to hide behind the invisibility of being an unpopular overachiever than it was to be part of the popular crowd.

Displaying physical capabilities far beyond most people's would just attract attention to them, and they had to be even further undercover now than they had been when Mary, Emma and Stephen had been KGB sleepers, because they had at least one part of the CIA actively searching for them now. It suited them anyway, because they could relate far better to the overachievers as their intelligence was closer to their own. Trying to talk to the 'popular' crowd, well Ellie and Chuck often joked that Mom should add it to her torture repertoire, because it was certainly painful!

They did have to be careful about what they showed in front of other people though, because when their mother came back to them, she'd stepped up their training. What she'd taught them before she went to Russia was more than most people ever learned, but faced with knowledge of the risks that her family (including Emma) were up against now, Mary had pushed their training into a full Spetsnaz regime. Ellie and Chuck's bodies were still growing, and she was careful not to push them too far physically, but she was determined that her family would be able to deal with whatever came after them, and having the Frost Queen at her most determined teaching them everything she knew, well the 'best of the best' would have had a nasty surprise if they went up against them!

They didn't ask where their mother got all the weapons, but she obviously still had her connections in the Russian military because most of them were the Russian Spetsnaz and other special operations weapons (all they knew for sure was that she made a few phone calls and a couple of weeks later went out one night and came back with a truck full of this stuff), but they had a very serious arsenal under the house, and she made sure that they knew how to use all of it, even Emma.

For all the fact that they were working hard at school, and putting in enough work hours for most to consider it as qualifying as a busy full-time job on the assignments outside school hours, Ellie and Chuck enjoyed their school years in Arcadia. They had fun with their friends, and Ellie breezed through to be Valedictorian at sixteen and get a full scholarship for pre-med. None of the family, including 'Auntie Di' and 'Uncle Roan', had ever had any doubt that she'd achieve her goal of becoming a top neurologist, nor did anyone have to ask why she'd chosen that path, because they'd all been horrified by the state that Stephen was in when they recovered him about twelve months after Emma got Ellie and Charlie away.

By the time he was recovered, Stephen had managed to create an external suppression device that significantly slowed the degeneration caused by the Intersect, because it basically suppressed or shut down the Intersect's activity. This allowed Stephen to function well enough, better than most in fact given how far past most people he was before, but he was a shell of his former self. Auntie Di had managed to locate a therapist who was capable enough to be able to help Stephen and who was also prepared to keep his, their, secrets. Ellie and Chuck didn't have to be told twice when they were abruptly told to stop asking questions about how Auntie Di got Dr Dreyfus to help Dad after Mom and Auntie Em were laughing about it, they got the message, ewwww! Having him leave again right after he'd come back to them was hard, but Dr Dreyfus was based in Washington, so they understood that Stephen had to go there to work with him.

Chuck had good memories of his time at high school. Just as Ellie went into neurology to help their father, he took the technology path for the same reason, but he'd wanted to follow in his father's footsteps anyway. He had something Ellie didn't though, a best friend who he did nearly everything with. They were inseparable, as they shared most of the same interests and went everywhere together, they also had sleepovers all the time and Ellie teased him mercilessly about his 'little friend'. She never crossed the line and suggested that Anna had replaced Sammie though, because she knew that he still thought about Sammie every day, and would do so until they got her back.

Over the years, nearly everyone outside the family came to believe that Anna was Chuck's girlfriend, even her own family, and they were careful to foster that belief, because Anna actually had a girlfriend, and neither her or Jill's families were likely to able to handle the idea that their daughters were lesbians. The one thing that Chuck didn't share with Anna was the family secret, and they had to be careful when she was sleeping over (especially when Jill did as well, as she did so often), but they found ways to make it work.

* * *

They did let Auntie Di have her time to pat herself on the back about how successful their group was, as while no-one had questioned that she was right about that, she was the one who'd made the effort to get it started and manage it, so they gave her that.

On paper, with the multiple identities that each of them worked under, their group had well over a dozen people in it. Their output was sufficient to uphold the fiction that they had that many actual people working there, and that was also how they had the money to do what they needed, because all of their fifteen core identities were on the payroll and were being paid. They had another ten or fifteen identities that they usually 'liaised' with who weren't on the payroll, but helped maintain the web around them and obfuscated who and what they were well enough to ensure that no-one got close to them.

As Auntie Di had said, their success gave them the access to the resources they needed to pursue the search for Sammie, but unfortunately this still wasn't enough to locate her. They were at least seeing where she and her father popped up now whenever her father screwed up, but when that happened, they'd just disappear again and there wouldn't be any more sign of them until the next time they popped up, usually halfway, or all the way, across the country. The only thing that they really got from these sightings was the confirmation that Sammie was still OK, but that gave them something to hang onto at least.

* * *

Arcadia - June 1997

None of them were at all surprised when Chuck followed in Ellie's footsteps to be Valedictorian and get a full scholarship to Stanford for a double major, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, at sixteen. It WAS a pleasant surprise when Anna's parents sent her to Stanford to do the Computer Science as well, as they thought that they'd be separated when they went to university, and Anna was excited when Jill told her that a family friend had arranged for an endowment to let her study Microbiology there as well, so the three musketeers were still together.

While they had plenty of money, the need to stay undercover meant that they had to maintain the fiction of money being a little tight, so Chuck had to go with the allocated housing and have a room mate. They were trying to think of a viable way around that, because it would prevent him working while he was up in Palo Alto, but how to manage that without exposing their cover was still stumping them when he went up there to start classes. Chuck had to laugh at Anna's attempt at an innocent expression when she was asked how she and Jill happened to be allocated as room mates, but she was a renowned hacker (not up to Chuck's level perhaps but better than most), so he knew that she could have hacked into the allocation system in her sleep.

Given that the three of them were all going up there together, they arranged to borrow a truck from 'his father's work' to move them up there with their things (the story that they'd used to explain why Ellie and Chuck's father wasn't around and why Mary was at home most of the time was that their father worked on off-shore or remote projects all the time because the money was good enough to support the family). When they arrived at the campus though, what they saw dampened their excitement quite a bit, because there were warning notices about bashings and rapes of homosexuals and angry banners about homosexuality being a crime against God and an abomination in the eyes of God, and how sinners would be punished all over the place.

For the obvious (and quite valid) reasons, this frightened Anna and Jill, a lot! It was almost enough to make them question whether they even wanted to go to university, but they were strong women and they weren't going to let bigots dictate their life choices, so Chuck helped them move into their room. Once they were in their room and safe from eavesdroppers, Chuck suggested that it might help if they used the pretence that Anna was his girlfriend again, to throw people off the scent.

The girls were grateful for that, but Anna surprised him when she hugged and kissed him and then said "We're so lucky to have you in our lives Chuck! That would be great, but not me, Jill." That had both of them looking at her and asking what the hell she meant.

"Didn't you see the way all those guys were looking at her like a piece of meat? They're going to be on her like sharks in a feeding frenzy at the first chance they get, but if she's your girlfriend, that may help to keep them away."

They both looked at her, taking that in and thinking back, Chuck had to accept that she was right, Jill had been attracting a lot more attention and comments than Anna had, so he looked questioningly at Jill and she smiled, coming to sit in his lap and kiss him, saying "Hi, lover!" He had to laugh at that.

With that, Jill and Anna reciprocated and helped Chuck move into his room, and he introduced them to his room mate, Bryce, as his girlfriend and friend respectively. Afterwards they dropped the truck off and went to have dinner, but when Anna laughed and said "Well, your situation is going to be interesting!" Chuck just looked at her, confused and asked what she meant?

Anna choked on her drink, but when she could talk she said. "Seriously? You didn't see it? Your room mate is gay!"

"What? No he isn't, you saw all those those girlie posters he had up!"

He looked at Jill for support but she was shaking her head with a sad smile "Sorry Chuck, but she's right, Bryce is gay, so gay! And he really seems to have the hots for you, too."

"No, he can't be…." They both nodded at him sympathetically and he slumped in resignation "Fuck! What am I going to do about that?" He didn't get much comfort from the way that they were sympathetically rubbing his shoulders.

* * *

Palo Alto - September 1997

When the girls went back to their room after dinner, they started talking to the other girls in their dorm and found out why most of those girls looked upset and worried. They were told that groups of masked men had been breaking into the rooms of women in the dormitories and raping any woman who was suspected of being a lesbian. Obviously this terrified them and they went back to their room in tears.

As soon as they got back to their room they called Chuck to tell him about this, and he said that he'd be right over. When they'd had a chance to cry it out on his shoulder, they asked him if he'd stay with them that night (they didn't really know what he was capable of physically, they just wanted him there because they needed him). Chuck immediately said "Of course!" without any hesitation, not even thinking about the situation back in his own room until Anna hugged him and said with a shaky laugh. "Hey, maybe this way you don't have to worry about getting raped tonight either."

The three of them had had so many sleepovers over the years that the girls had no compunctions about getting undressed and changed in front of Chuck, they knew he was straight, but they also knew that he was the perfect gentleman and that he'd spend the rest of his life if need be looking for the one who'd been taken out of his life when he was eight, they'd heard that story from the whole family. To Anna and Jill, Chuck was as good as one of the girls, so they just got ready for bed and settled down for the night after a round of good night kisses.

Chuck was woken a few hours later by sounds out in the hall, so he leapt out of bed and woke the girls. They were terrified, because they didn't think that there was anything Chuck could do to fight off the men who were coming for them. He was shocked when Anna spat out "Jill, the stories said that they're only raping lesbians, get your top off and start making out with Chuck!" as she stripped her top off, but when he recovered Chuck tried to tell them that they didn't need to do that, he could fight them, but Anna blurted out "There's no time for this Chuck! We have to do it this way, it's the only way!" With that she pulled down his boxers and latched onto him, while Jill threw her top on the floor and fell on him in a heated make out session. They'd hardly done that before the door of their room burst open and a half a dozen big, burly figures in ski masks rushed in.

As distracting as Jill, and especially Anna, were being, Chuck didn't miss a word of what was said when the men entered "Shit, I thought she said that they were dykes?"

"Who cares? Maybe the dweeb's warmed them up for us, which one do you wanna do first?"

"The Chink looks ready, we can start with her…."

At that point the clock radio that Chuck had grabbed from the bedside table cut off his words as it smashed into his face, the heavy base of the lamp took out the next guy and the vase the one after him. Then Chuck swept Jill and Anna off him and rolled out of bed, grabbing up the heavy wooden chair against the wall and swinging it at the others. In under thirty seconds, they were all down, the three he took out with the chair in by far the worst shape because they had shattered arms, legs and ribs.

Chuck pulled up his boxers and went to one of the conscious ones, yanking off the ski mask and grabbing him by the hair "Who's 'she'?"

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

"Your buddies said 'she' told them that the girls were dykes, who's 'she'?"

"Fuck you! I'm not telling you any….."

His words were lost in a scream as Chuck put his weight on the spot where he'd shattered the guy's leg with the chair.

When he stopped screaming, Chuck repeated the question "Who's she?"

The guy wasn't about to go through that again, so he nodded out the door "HER!"

Chuck turned to see a severe looking young woman standing there, fully dressed at two in the morning when everyone else was in sleepwear. When she saw him look at her she turned to run but the other girls crowding around the door had heard what was said and grabbed her. What they'd heard was that this bitch had been setting girls up to be raped because she didn't approve of their life choices, and some of those girls had been their friends, so there was no way that they were letting her get away!

Someone would have called the campus police by now, but Chuck didn't trust them, so he called Auntie Di, telling her what happened and she told him to try and stall until she could get the FBI team there.

With that, Chuck went back to the girls, they'd put their tops back on and Anna had her arms around Jill, comforting her. As he walked up, Jill stepped forward to embrace him and he kissed her, whispering in her ear "Remember, I'm your boyfriend." She nodded and kissed him, and then he reached out to pull Anna into the embrace, kissing her on the forehead, whispering "I don't think anyone else saw you, so we should pretend you were in your own bed." Anna nodded at that, and hugged him.

By the time the campus police arrived, some of the girls who'd been raped had come in and said that they were sure that these were the men who'd raped them, and others had confirmed that the would-be rapists were all on the football team.

Things went as Chuck expected with the campus police, as they said that the boys had just been playing around doing a panty raid and tried to arrest Chuck, saying that he was facing multiple counts of grievous bodily harm and unprovoked assault. When the other girls pushed in and started shouting at them about all the rapes that had been occurring they just said that there was no evidence that these boys had had anything to do with that and told them to get out of the way.

These arguments managed to keep the campus cops tied up until the FBI arrived though, and Chuck smiled in relief when they did, because the first guy who walked in was Auntie Di's 'go to guy', John Casey. Chuck wasn't sure why he was putting on a southern accent, but it was a fight not to laugh as he drawled "You better check yourself boy! Trying to tell the FBI that we don't have any authority? Did your Mama hit you with the stupid stick or something?" when the jumped up security guard tried to tell him to get out as the campus police had this under control.

At that, the other girls started shouting about the rapes that had been going on and how this bitch had been setting girls up to be raped and how the campus cops had been sweeping it all under the carpet. Casey's expression turned very grim at that as he brusquely told the campus cops to get out, but not go too far, because he'd be angry if he had to track them down, that was all it took to make them scamper out of there.

The would-be rapists were taken to hospital to be treated and were kept under guard there, with samples being taken from them for DNA tests, and the woman who'd sent them to Anna and Jill's room was taken into custody and questioned. The next day samples were taken from the rest of their team as well, along with the other university teams. Some of the players tried to argue, but they buckled very quickly when faced with a very angry John Casey.

It took a couple of months for the real police, with the FBI's help, to root out everyone who'd been involved in the rapes, and some people around the university were angry because a number of the university's first string players ended up in jail (how dare those girls destroy their team because the boys had a bit of fun?), along with a number of the religious fanatics who'd been targeting the girls to be raped. A number of others (including some of the campus police) who they didn't have enough evidence on to make criminal charges stick were banished from the university. The women of the university felt a little safer, but those bastards hadn't been the only predators on the campus, so they still had to be careful, and the anti-homo crowd were still there too.

* * *

Meanwhile there were other issues to be resolved, Anna and Jill were, not unexpectedly, afraid to stay in the dorms after those men had burst into their room like that, especially considering what they'd been planning to do to them. That helped Chuck come up with a solution to two problems, or more to the point, three. Another call to Auntie Di that night set things in motion to organise a secure two bedroom off-campus apartment for the girls, and they put together the story that the university had funded it to avoid a lawsuit. The girls moved in, using one of the bedrooms, and Chuck took the other one, he left much of his stuff in his allocated housing room, and they just used the story that he was staying with his girlfriend most nights (just about every night, really).

This way, the girls had a place where they could feel secure and Chuck had his own room at the apartment, so he could take up his share of the workload for the group again, and he also didn't have to worry about Bryce's attentions, which had become irritating and worrying in the time before they got the apartment set up. And if Anna or Jill's family came up to Palo Alto, all they had to do was throw the rest of Anna's things into Chuck's room (she left half of them in there all the time just in case) to make it look like she was living with him, so it was a win/win solution for all of them.

* * *

San Diego - June 1998

Jenny Burton had to remind herself of what she was doing this for as she tried to tune out the jeers and innuendo from the popular crowd, they'd always been horrible, but it had increased exponentially after her father went back on his word and went back to the con game. He'd screwed up the con because he tried to do it without her help and as a result got himself caught and arrested. She'd been getting ready to run, while swearing at him for screwing up her chance of a real life when she was so close, when that man Graham found her. He couldn't be the same one that Uncle Stephen worked for could he? When they used to talk about him they'd said that he was CIA, and a bastard, that much at least fit. She would have just put another knife into him and run if it had just been her father that he was holding over her, but when he said that they could get to Mama in prison as well, that was what stopped her. Her father deserved whatever happened to him, he'd screwed up their lives too many times, but not Mama, she had to protect Mama, THAT was why she'd agreed to work for the CIA.

What she couldn't work out was how the word about her father had gotten around when there were absolutely no public notifications, it was almost as if someone had gone around town telling all the gossip mongers on the down low. She'd heard enough from her mother and Auntie Mary to know that the CIA was quite capable of doing that, but the question was WHY? Why go to this much effort when a public announcement would have spread the word that much further and faster?

At least she had the satisfaction of seeing so many of the esteemed citizens of San Diego spewing vitriol about the fact that this jailbird's daughter had stolen the title of Valedictorian from one of their little princesses. When their demands that it be taken off her and awarded to one of their children were refused by the school board, they'd hired external auditors to find something to take it off of her with. Somehow the auditors missed the minor discrepancies that she was sure would have been in her transcripts when she 'transferred in' and came back with an official finding that she'd thoroughly trounced everyone else, even before all of the extra credit work she'd done, so her award of Valedictorian was upheld. Unfortunately Graham understood her nature well enough to call her and remind her what the ramifications to her mother would be if she gave the Valedictorian's speech that she wanted to, so she ended up having to come out with the same sort of crap that everyone else did.

At least that was all finished now and she was out of there, and she was actually on her way to Harvard. Graham had told her that it was beneficial for an agent's cover to have a good degree, because that provided the underpinnings for a strong cover identity which could stand up to examination, so she was going to Harvard to get her degrees in law and business management, but of course she'd also be studying a hell of a lot more on top of that. She'd already started her training, as her 'guardians' for the past couple of months had been putting her through a punishing basic training regime in the time leading up to her graduation, and she'd been told that the period between graduation and starting at Harvard would be spent immersed in a far more intensive training program than she'd ever experienced before. She'd also be getting a total makeover to re-create Jenny Burton into Sarah Walker apparently.

By the time Sarah Walker started at Harvard in September of ninety eight, Jenny Burton was gone. Most people who'd known Jenny by sight wouldn't recognise her in the blonde goddess who was Sarah Walker, and any electronic record of Jenny Burton had been scrubbed as well. The CIA had effectively replaced or deleted any and all references to Jenny Burton to ensure that there was no record that she had ever existed. Sarah had also noted when she saw 'her' records that she was officially eighteen, two years older, but they may have taken that from Jenny's records. In and of itself, Sarah/Sammie didn't mind at all that Jenny was gone, as she'd been nothing but the end of a long line of irritating identities and looks that her father had imposed on her over the eight and a half years that she'd been with him, and the fact that she could look in the mirror now and see herself as her mother's daughter again was at least one thing that made her happy. Having all of this arbitrarily forced on her by the CIA though, THAT was something that she didn't like one bit!

Once she started at Harvard, she was living off-campus because any time she wasn't directly engaged in what she was studying at the university, she was working on her spy training. She'd come to understand that 'free time' had effectively been removed from her vocabulary, because any time she wasn't sleeping she was working, and she had to cut back on her sleep time as well. On-line training and anything else that could be done there was done at her apartment, but every weekend and break, and even some nights, she went off for other training. Graham had told her that she was going to do far more extensive and intensive training than other agents, and that if she didn't put her all into it, others would pay. Sarah didn't have any trouble translating the threat, and that was yet another thing that made her want to kill Graham.

* * *

Palo Alto - October 1997

Chuck and the girls settled into the apartment and everything was going well, but to keep up appearances he had to stay in 'his' room with Bryce at least once every week or two, and between the looks and touches from Bryce and the comments Anna made when she was winding him up, those nights were making him rather uncomfortable. Part of that came from the fact that to make this work, Chuck had had to convince Bryce and everyone else that they were best buddies, and convinced Bryce that he needed him to cover for him because no-one could know that he was spending just about every night at Jill's.

He'd looked Bryce in the eye and told him that Jill's family were strict Christians, so they'd disown her if they knew that she was sleeping with her boyfriend, then he'd begged him to tell everyone else that he was staying in their room and spending most of their time together. Chuck hated lying, but Mom and Uncle Roan had trained him well, too well, because he could make most people believe and do whatever he wanted, so the rest of the university believed that Chuck and Bryce were inseparable, but the problem was that Bryce had apparently convinced himself that those stories were true as well.

* * *

Palo Alto - June 1998

The people who got to see Chuck as he really was saw something that they'd never seen before, and never wanted to see again, an incredibly angry Chuck. He'd found some anomalies in the results of the search engines he'd set up to keep looking for any mention of Sammie, and when he looked into them more carefully he found that a Jack Burton had screwed up a con in San Diego and got himself arrested and incarcerated back in April. The man had had a eighteen year old daughter who'd apparently disappeared a couple of weeks ago, but he'd searched through all the records, and there was no indication that she'd ever existed! Chuck was certain it was her, which led to a number of questions.

First, how and why had any mention of the arrest, trial and incarceration of Jack Burton been suppressed?

Second, why the hell hadn't they been keeping a better watch on San Diego, considering that Jack and Sammie came from there?

Third, how had Sammie, or whoever she was now, disappeared so completely after San Diego? All the signs were screaming CIA to him, but when he hacked into the CIA's systems as the Piranha and searched for all known aliases and looks for Sammie, nothing came up other than the references that they'd already seen when they popped up on the system. Chuck knew that Sammie had to be in the CIA's clutches by now, so why couldn't he find any trace of her?

And Fourth, where the hell was Jack Burton? He wanted to get his hands on the man and ask him some questions about his daughter, among other things! The family knew that they couldn't allow this last to happen, because all of them, even Mary, could see the essence of the Frost Queen on a rampage in his eyes. Chuck wasn't angry at 'Uncle Jack' at the moment, he was totally furious, so the probability of Jack surviving that meeting was slim to none.

They weren't doing to allow that meeting because it would destroy Chuck after he came down from this rage to find out what he'd done, even if he didn't kill him, and his picture would probably be plastered over everything as well, which would in turn lead the CIA and therefore Graham straight to him. For that matter they needed to keep Burton alive in case they needed him to answer other questions down the track, so Auntie Di made arrangements for her Pit Bull to go in the minute that they tracked down Burton's location. John Casey may not be at all subtle most of the time, but he was extremely capable, and the consummate professional, so if anyone could get the situation under control it was John.

Casey did have a talk to Jack, in the guise of an FBI Agent, but Jack didn't tell him anything of use because he was clueless about what had happened, the con had gone south (not his fault, of course!) and he'd been arrested, then he'd somehow been rushed through a trial and thrown in prison in a matter of a couple of weeks. He didn't have any idea where his daughter was (or care, Casey noted), and all he was interested in was getting a re-trial and getting out of there. That was enough to make Casey stand up and walk out of there without another word.

* * *

Palo Alto - January 2000

Chuck had been working through his degrees and his duties to the group, but his heart wasn't in it, now that he was sure that Sammie was in the clutches of the CIA, he was spending every moment he could searching for her. That was probably why he missed Bryce's changing behaviour back in their second year of university, he started going away quite a bit and asking more questions about Chuck's background, but Chuck had just put it down to him starting to give up on 'them' and was too happy about that to question it.

He didn't miss another big change, though, because the girls came to him for help with it. In their third year, he came in one night to find Jill in tears and Anna rather worried. Anna jumped up and came to him, saying "We've got a problem!" What came out when Jill had calmed down enough to tell him was that the endowment that her 'Uncle Bernie' had organised so that she could go to Stanford had come with strings attached. Apparently it had been put up by some spy organisation called 'Fulcrum' and now they were telling her that they owned her and expected her to do whatever they said, and they'd said that things would happen to her family if she didn't.

When Jill finished recounting the tale, Anna turned to Chuck and said "Who are they Chuck? and what can we do about them?"

Chuck tried to deflect "How would I know? You obviously know more about this than I do!"

That pissed her off "If we mean anything to you Chuck, help us! You're part of that world, I've known it for years. Your family knows more about most things than anyone else I know of, let alone know, and an awful lot of those things seem to be rather secret. Those exercises you do morning and night, have you forgotten that I know martial arts too? The way you handled yourself when those bastards broke into our room, and the fact that you got an FBI team there at two thirty in the morning with one mysterious phone call? And you really need to hide your guns better, I found some of them when I was looking for some of my things in your room! You're part of that world and we need you, please help us!"

She was crying angrily by then, looking as though she didn't know whether she was going to break down or explode, so he pulled her into his arms and kissed her on the forehead, whispering that he was sorry, but it hadn't just been his secret so he couldn't talk about it. When she'd calmed down a little, he kissed her and then pulled out his phone, calling Auntie Di. "Auntie Di, what do you know about an organisation known as Fulcrum?"

She was quiet for a moment then said "Not a lot, why do you ask Chuck?"

"Because they were apparently the ones who put up the endowment for my friend Jill Roberts to go to Stanford, and they've just called in their marker and told her that she'll do whatever they tell her to or else her family will pay. Oh, and my friend Anna Wu worked out what we do years ago but she only just told me when this came to a head."

She was silent for a moment and then said "Fuck! Anything else? Is Anna working for the Chinese government too?"

Chuck grinned, he'd needed something to lighten the mood "I don't think so, I'll ask." He put his phone on speaker as he turned to Anna "Auntie Di wants to know whether you're a Chinese agent?"

Anna barked out laughter, as she'd needed a respite too. "Not as far as I know, but the way this is going, who knows?"

Auntie Di chuckled at that and said "Obviously Chuck has me on speaker, so I may as well tell all of you, as I said to him I don't have much, but Fulcrum are supposedly a group of hard liners who aren't happy with how soft they see America is getting, so they've decided to take it on themselves to turn it back in the right direction. I'd normally get Captain Casey in to handle something like this, but I think we need a softer touch than his because while John's a good man, he's like a bull in a China shop. I think it would be best if the three of you went home to Los Angeles this weekend, and I'll find a way to meet you at the Bartowskis'. Miss Roberts, don't worry, we'll do what we can to help you."

Chuck looked at the girls, and the relieved smiles on their faces, and said. "Thanks Auntie Di, why don't we meet Saturday and say that it's Auntie Em's birthday or something?"

"Yes, that sounds good, I'll see you Saturday." With that, she disconnected the link.

Chuck went to hug Jill and tell her that it would be alright.

 **A/N: Yeah, I was planning on stretching out the 'little friend' angle for a while to try and give people the impression that it was HIM, but I found that the idea was making me feel physically ill, I just couldn't do it.**

 **NB: The only real difference between Anna/Jill and Bryce/Chuck here is consent. Anna & Jill want to be together, but Bryce is coming on to Chuck against his wishes. Similar to Chuck/Sarah and Bryce/Sarah in the show I guess.**


	3. Practice Dummy

**There's more talk about sexual matters in this one, so if you don't want to read that, don't.**

 **The Bryce and George situation may not be comfortable for some either.**

 **Usual disclaimers, no rights to any characters portrayed and this isn't the real world.**

Palo Alto - January 2000

First thing Saturday morning, Chuck, Anna and Jill piled into Anna's Evo VI and headed for Los Angeles. When her parents had offered to pay for a car for her, Anna took Chuck along to help her choose one, and they'd been a little surprised when she came back with the Evo, but they just put it down to being her 'boyfriend's influence and wrote it off as 'boys and their toys'. Of course they didn't know enough about cars to know that what she got should have cost far them more than they paid for it, or that it had had a number of significant upgrades since then. It normally served to give Anna and Jill reliable (and quite exciting) transportation, but it meant that Chuck had a high performance vehicle available if he needed one without it standing out too much.

On the way to Los Angeles, Anna dropped another bombshell "You know that the Evo was one of the things that confirmed my suspicions about you and your family, don't you Chuck?" He glanced over from where he was driving in surprise, but didn't say anything. "I looked up some of the things that you had your 'buddies' do to it for me, and found out that most of the things they put in aren't available in the US, aren't available to anyone but the works racing teams anywhere for that matter, and needless to say, I was shocked when I found out how much they cost. So just how fast is this thing anyway?"

Chuck looked over with a grin "Very fast!" She matched his grin and continued "That's what I thought! Anyway, that got me thinking about why you'd organise for me to get this car and then do it up like this and I realised that you, secret agent man, needed something like this for your missions and this was the best way have it and stay undercover. Of course, those clips you added under the driver's seat to hold your guns clinched it."

That got her another grin as he said with a laugh. "I can't wait to see Mom and Auntie Di's faces when you tell them THAT! They're going to shit bricks!"

Anna laughed at that, but she looked back to see Jill looking wide eyed at all this, so she reached over to squeeze her hand, giving her a reassuring smile. Jill relaxed, then suddenly looked worried and bent down to feel under the driver's seat, looking REALLY worried as she came up again and asked. "Chuck why did you bring guns with you? Are we in danger?"

He glanced back to flash her a reassuring smile "Not as far as I know, no. I just like to be prepared you know, just in case?" He gave Anna a look and she gave a slight nod to say that she'd gotten the message, turning on the stereo and cranking it up. Soon enough, they were all mangling their favourite songs as they sang along at the top of their voices and the mood in the car had improved.

* * *

Arcadia - January 2000

Things settled down a little once they were back in familiar territory at Chuck's family's house, as the girls had been spending most weekends there for years because the 'three musketeers' had been together just about all of the time, so it was like coming home to them and they gained comfort from that. A few hours after they got there, a rental car pulled into the drive and two people got out. When they saw the man who'd been driving, Anna and Jill turned to Chuck with 'You wanna explain this?' expressions, because it was John Casey, who they knew only as the lead agent of the FBI team who had come to their room on their first night at Stanford. Chuck just shrugged, careful to keep what he was thinking off his face, but this was going to be interesting.

When they were all sitting down in the living room and introductions had been made, Anna spoke up angrily "Are you people FBI, or not? Because the last time we met 'Captain Casey' over there, he was claiming to be FBI Special Agent Alex Coburn!"

Diane took a breath as she tried to work out how respond, eventually she looked up and said. "There isn't a simple yes or no answer to that question Miss Wu. Yes, if you got into the FBI systems you'd find legitimate records for Captain Casey as Special Agent Coburn, along with other people in the room, but that's not all we are. Our core group is part of the NSA, but we also work for and with other government organisations as well."

Anna glanced at Chuck "Alright, let's try a simpler question, how long has Chuck worked for you?"

Diane looked at Chuck, and then Mary, and when both of them had nodded their agreement she responded (though it took a while for Chuck to get past the 'deer in the headlights' look that came over him when he heard the question). "About seven and a half years."

"Since he was fucking eleven?"

Diane and Mary shared a look at that "Yes, but not in his current capacity, of course."

"What 'capacity' was he working in then?"

"As you know, Chuck is brilliant, like everyone in his family, so when we originally started our group in early ninety two, he and Ellie were doing analysis work with his mother and Emma. Over the next four or five years, his mother gave him additional training and he started taking a more active role in other parts of the work."

That last part made John Casey turn to look at Mary, because he'd worked with Chuck in the field and had seen what he could do, who was she that she could teach him those things, and how had he learned them that young? For that matter, what was with that look that she and the Colonel shared when the girl made a comment about Chuck's age? That had pretty much been saying 'yeah, let's go with that', which meant that he wasn't that old at all. Just who were these people?

Diane noted Casey's look and decided that she needed to get back to the topic at hand before, well before it got out of hand. "Miss Roberts, can you tell us what happened, and what these people are asking of you?"

When Jill had told her story, Diane and Mary looked at each other, disturbed, because they knew what the young woman would be expected to do, be made to do, so Diane spoke again. "Miss Roberts, Jill, as I told you over the phone, we don't know a great deal about these people yet, we'll be working on that, but as shadowy as they are, I'm afraid that it will take us some time. We'll be sending Captain Casey to see whether they have anyone watching your family yet later…."

Casey interrupted at that "Ma'am, we flew commercial, so I couldn't bring any weapons or equipment with me…." but Mary cut him off angrily, saying "Chuck will fix you up with whatever you need later, quiet!" as she knew what was coming, and she didn't have any time for his petty concerns.

Diane nodded thanks to her and continued "Jill, you need to know, one of the things that they're going to expect you to do, that they'll make you do to prove that you're under their control, is sleep with men, and I'm afraid that we aren't likely to be able to do anything about them quickly enough to prevent that."

Jill looked at Anna, then back at Diane, horrified "I, I can't, I've never been with a man like that, or any other way for that matter, don't you know that?"

Diane nodded sympathetically "Yes, I do know dear, I also know that it will be much better for you if your first time, your first few times, were with someone who you trust and care for, do you know anyone who could be that for you?"

At that, Jill immediately looked at Chuck, as they all knew she would, then turned to Anna with tears in her eyes. Anna whispered something to her as she held her, and nodded and kissed her when she pulled back to look at her, so Jill turned to Chuck. "Chuck, would, would you do that for me?"

Chuck couldn't speak at that point, so he just nodded with tears in his eyes, distraught that the people he loved could be being put through this.

Ellie came over and rubbed Jill's back as she was in Anna's arms, saying "Don't worry sweetie, just try to think of him as a practice dummy, that might make it easier. You could be doing him a favour actually, because as you know, he doesn't have any more experience at that than you do." She looked up at Chuck with a sad smile and said "Do you, Dummy?"

That got a laugh out of them, except for Chuck, who was blushing madly, and Casey, who didn't dare say a thing after the look Mary had shot at him when she cut him off. Mind you, he'd quite understood that look after what they'd told the poor girl.

Afterwards, while the others were talking, Mary pulled Chuck aside and hugged him, telling him how proud she was of him, and Ellie and Emma did as well. It was more of a shock though when Casey clasped his shoulder and gruffly said "You're a good man Chuck, doing this for your friend!" as he was taking him downstairs to get him the equipment he needed to check out the area around the Roberts' home.

* * *

Casey was dumbstruck when Chuck took him into the armoury and turned the lights on, because he'd never seen a collection of weaponry like this before, he also noted that much of the weaponry and equipment was high end Russian gear, though the best of the gear from Israel, American and other countries was there too. When he finished looking around the room, he turned to Chuck.

"Chuck, who are you people? Who is your mother, that she could train you to do the things you do when you were just a kid, how did you get your hands on an entire Spetsnaz arsenal, and just how old are you anyway?"

He looked again at the array of weaponry that would have made him drool in any other circumstances, so he missed the glance that Chuck flicked at the hidden camera in the corner (he knew where it was because he'd put it there).

Casey turned back abruptly when Chuck started speaking "Have you heard of the stories about the CIA Agent, Frost?"

He snorted "Who hasn't? but they're just stories, part of some CIA attempt at spin doctoring to try and convince everyone else that they've got the biggest, baddest agents on the planet!"

"Really? Because she just about made you piss your pants upstairs half an hour ago!"

Casey looked at him, dumbstruck again. OK, yeah, if half of those stories were true, he could see how that woman could have turned her son into the agent, the man, in front of him before he was in his mid-teens, but Chuck was still talking.

"What about Alexei Volkoff?" He snorted at the look of horror that crossed Casey's face "Yeah, I see you know that name! Well he was CIA too, but they tried an experimental procedure on him and made him into what he is now. Mom was sent in to get him out, but he was too far gone to be recovered and she was trapped over there for more than a year and a half as his right hand man, so to speak. While she was there she established the contacts that made it possible for us to get the equipment we needed here." (Waving a hand around the armoury.) "And yeah, as you've apparently worked out, I'm not nineteen, they changed my age, and Ellie's as well, when we were given new IDs to make it harder for Volkoff and the ones in the CIA who created him to find us, I just turned eighteen."

There was silence after that as Casey tried to digest what Chuck had just told him, Mary Bartowski, his mother, had been the legendary CIA agent Frost AND the woman who'd managed to strike fear into the hearts of the world's most feared men as Volkoff's enforcer. Alexei Volkoff, possibly the most vile creature on the planet, was in fact a CIA creation. And this young man, who he'd come to trust and respect and yes, care for and about, over the past five years or so had been being trained to be one of the intelligence and special operations elite since he was ten?

"How, how could any woman put her own son through that when he was just a kid?"

The look in Chuck's eyes at that made him take a step back "She did it to protect us! You have no idea of what we've had after us, and it only got worse after she got away from Volkoff, so she wanted to make sure that we had the best chance of surviving the world that we're in. And by the way? She hasn't just been training us since she got back from Russia, she and Auntie Em have been training us for this for our whole lives!"

Chuck turned away angrily and asked "What equipment do you want?" abruptly.

"You know this gear better than I do, what do you suggest?"

As Chuck headed over to the racked weapons, upstairs, Mary, Diane and Emma were sharing looks of awe, and not a little pride, about what they'd just witnessed on the monitor. At the drop of the hat, Chuck had managed to spin what was nearly all the straight truth into a story to explain their operation that one of America's best agents had accepted without question. John Casey was totally on board with them now and he'd stand beside, no, follow, Chuck through anything. Mary and Diane knew with absolute certainty that they couldn't have done any better than that, no-one could have.

Mary kept watching the monitor, curious to see what Chuck would set Casey up with, and she wasn't at all surprised when heard him say "Anything you run into there should be close range, so you'll be better off with suppressed weapons for this." The first item he picked up and handed to him was an AS VAL suppressed assault rifle, then he moved on to the pistols, picking up a Chinese Type 67 silent pistol briefly before putting it back down and picking up a couple of Glock 21s with separate suppressors and handing them to him. From there, he selected and handed over a few knives, night vision/infra-red goggles, parabolic mic, scanner for communications radios, a wide array of surveillance devices and the like before leading him over to the ammo area, sliding across a number of 30 rd mags for the VAL and 13 round mags for the 21s, along with subsonic ammo for both. As they were standing there, loading the magazines, Chuck explained the behaviour and operation of the weapons and equipment to Casey.

When they were done and Casey had stuffed all the weapons and equipment into a bag to take with him, Casey stopped and looked around again. "I'd really like to have a chance to try most of this when there's a chance." Chuck swept a look around the room and shrugged, saying "Yeah, when there's a chance maybe" before ushering Casey out and securing the armoury.

* * *

Over dinner, Diane brought up something else before Casey went off to see whether Fulcrum had anyone posted to watch Jill's family. "Miss Wu, Anna, since we first talked, I've been discussing your insights and capabilities with Mary, Emma and Ellie…." She caught Anna's glance at Chuck "No, we didn't discuss this with Chuck as we thought he was too close to the situation, anyway we have a proposition that we'd like you to consider. I'm not going to sugar coat this, the situation that Jill's in is very dangerous, and that's why we'd like you to join us, so we can prepare you to help protect her."

Anna looked at her "You want me to join your world, become a spy?"

That got a smile from Diane "I might not have put it that way, but basically, yes. If you join us, we can extend your already impressive martial arts skills, train you with weapons, defensive driving and the like. We can also train you to spot the signs when someone's watching you, or someone else. Chuck can share with you the type of computer skills and resources that would get you locked up if you tried to use them as a civilian. In short, we can give you what you need to help keep Jill safe."

Anna looked at Jill for a moment and then turned back to Diane "Yes! I'm in!"

Diane nodded "Good, we'll go over the paperwork and formalities later, because there will be a LOT of paperwork. Of course, you will be required to help with our other work as well, but for now the focus will be Jill's protection."

Chuck had been hoping to put their 'practice' off until later, much later, but Mary had had a quiet word to Jill and pointed out that she needed to find out whether she could do this, because if she couldn't handle it, even with Chuck, then they'd need to find another solution, and that would probably mean something like the witness protection scheme for her and the rest of her family. That was why Jill was knocking on Chuck's bedroom door after everyone had gone to bed that night.

Afterwards, Jill had to say that if Chuck had no experience with sex, then he was obviously a natural, because the experience would have been up there with some of the best times she'd had with Anna, if it was with her. Chuck made love like a woman, but with one rather significant extra. The best part though was that it didn't make things strange between them, and they were both happy about that as they hugged and kissed before Jill went back to Anna to tell her about it.

In the morning, Mary was happy that it had gone so well when Jill told her about it, but she pointed out that Jill should get Chuck to be rougher and more forceful so that she would be able to handle it if she couldn't get out of it with other men. Mary hesitated before pointing out "You should also learn how to give men oral sex as well, as many of them demand it, quite forcefully." The discussion that they had wasn't a pleasant one, nor comforting, but frankly discussing the aspects of what was in front of her was giving Jill the confidence that she'd be able to cope with this. Some parts of the discussion were certainly eye openers, such as the twenty minute talk they had on how to convince men that it had actually been their idea to insist on using a condom.

Casey came back for breakfast, reporting that he didn't see anyone there, but showed them the evidence that people had been there watching the house. Finding out that the threats being made against her family were real didn't make Jill feel any better, but seeing evidence of the calibre of the people who were on her side now did, because even when Casey was pointing out the evidence he'd found, she was having trouble seeing it. Before they left, they set up everything to monitor and record the feeds from the surveillance equipment that Casey had set up, then Diane and Casey left for the airport and Chuck, Anna and Jill left for the drive back to Palo Alto.

* * *

Boston - March 1999

Sarah found that she was enjoying being at university, as she loved to learn, even though the gruelling pace of her extra curricular activities was wearing. Much of her spy training was actually quite easy though, as she'd been given a good grounding in the core skills by Mama and Auntie Mary, and it mostly involved the same skills as she'd perfected in eight years on the con game with her father.

She had a lot of trouble with her first handler, as he never let up, always pushing her to finish the assignments faster and faster. He was also constantly leering at her, making suggestive comments and trying to touch her, even though the pervert was old enough to be her father, in fact that WAS his cover. She'd had no qualms about putting the bastard into intensive care that night six months after she started at Harvard when he finally came into her room and tried to force himself on her, in fact she was angry with herself that she'd given in and called the CIA to come and tend to him when she did, because if she'd left it just a little longer he would have stopped being anyone's problem.

Even Graham didn't give her too much shit about what she'd done as there was no question about what had happened, but he frightened her when her told her that if she did anything of that nature while she was on a mission, there'd be serious ramifications, as that made it quite clear that he was expecting her to sleep with men on missions. When she got off the phone, Sarah was shaking, she wasn't even seventeen yet and had never gotten past first base with anyone before they did something to make her damage them. If it wasn't for what Graham would do to Mama, she would have run then and there, but she had to protect Mama.

Her second handler was a woman, Jane Bentley, and she wasn't too bad, well she was a hard arse and made it quite clear that she regarded being a handler as a step backwards, but she said that she'd accepted the deal she made and actively helped Sarah develop. Apparently the deal she made was that she would give up a minor Deputy Director role to coach a high value prospect through to active status, and in return she would be guaranteed a high profile Deputy Director position after Sarah became a full Agent.

Living with 'Aunt Jane' after 'her father died of a heart attack', well it wasn't exactly fun, but it was a hell of a lot better than it had been with that bastard. Jane had been quite a good field agent, and she helped Sarah deal with a lot of the issues in front of her. When Sarah shared her fears about what Graham had said and the fact that she was a virgin, Jane was actually sensitive about it, and she pointed out that it would be better for her if she found someone nice at university to deal with that matter on her terms before they tried to push her into it. Sarah got the definite impression that Jane was talking from personal experience when she told her that she DIDN'T want the choice about her first time, or first times, to be taken from her. The raw emotion that flashed in Jane's eyes as she said that convinced Sarah that this was good advice.

Even with that advice, Sarah had to use alcohol to get her through the time that she hooked up with the random, albeit nice, boy at a party to do it, because she was thinking about Charlie, well she thought about him often, but just then she was so wishing that it could have been him. She was grateful that she'd taken her advice when she was put in the position where she really had to go through with it for the CIA though, because having that stuck in her head as the memory of her first time would have been horrible.

* * *

Camp Peary - June 1999

In June of Ninety Nine, Sarah had to attend classes for what the rest of the trainees were calling 'Seduction School', and that worried her, as she was having visions of something out of a porno movie. Thinking that way, she was glad that she'd done as 'Aunt Jane' had suggested and gotten that out of the way, because the idea of being graded on her first time? Shit!

She was extremely relieved to find that it was nothing of the sort though, yeah, she had to flirt with, rub up to and kiss sleazy bastards who sometimes turned her stomach, but she didn't have to sleep with them, or even let them get any further than she'd let boys get when she was growing up. In fact, the older agent who was the instructor for the course was telling them that if it got to that stage, they'd failed!

Sarah was actually enjoying listening and talking to the instructor for that course, because what he was teaching them was interesting, and he was funny and, well, comfortable to talk to as well. Or at least she was enjoying it until she started letting her hair down with him towards the end and he started paying a lot of attention to her. That upset her, she'd thought that he was different, a kindly father figure like Uncle Stephen, but was soon as she started to let her defences down, he started moving in on her. She was just glad that she'd used a disguise like she normally did whenever she went into group trainings, because he wouldn't be able to recognise her if he saw her again, as 'Rebecca Loveday' had had dark brown hair and contacts and a few things to change the shape of her face.

Of course what Sarah didn't realise was that Roan, because that was who it was, had only started to see Emma in her when she dropped the mask and started talking to him as herself, so he was trying to work out whether it WAS her when she disappeared. He was kicking himself, why didn't he just call her Sammie when he had a chance to see how she'd react? He also couldn't afford to take the risk of calling any of the family from the Farm, so it was nearly a day later before he had a chance to call Diane to tell her that he thought he'd seen Sammie at the Farm, and by the time that Chuck managed to get into the CIA's systems to try and find her, there was no trace of her.

* * *

Boston - September 1999

About a year after Sarah started at Harvard, Graham decided that she was fully trained (Jane laughed at that afterwards as she told Sarah that she'd had twice the training of any other agent she knew of, and was twice as competent), and it was time for her to start on missions. Sarah found that she was actually upset about that, as she thought that it meant her time with Jane was done, and she'd gotten closer to her than she had to anyone since she'd been taken away from Mama, Auntie Mary, Charlie and Ellie, but Jane shook her head with a smile, pointing out that her cover at Harvard would be questioned if she lost TWO guardians while she was there, and told her that she'd stay on as her handler until at least the end of her time there, possibly even longer if she wasn't signed off as a full agent when she left university.

Sarah kept slipping away every weekend and break, and for the night as well when it was nearby, but now she was going off on missions, usually solo missions but sometimes with a partner or a team. It only took her one time to confirm that the adrenalin fueled post mission sex that everybody else raved about just left HER feeling unfulfilled and sullied, so she quickly shot down any partners who pressed for it (and physically slapped down any who kept pushing after that). Because of that, it didn't take long for the nickname they'd given her in training when she kept her distance from most people to be revived, and it stuck this time. She had to laugh at that though, because even though they thought they were being clever about calling her a frigid bitch, she actually took pride in being known as the Ice Queen, as it reminded her of the Frost Queen, the name that Mama had told her Auntie Mary had been known as.

* * *

Palo Alto - January 2000

When they got back to Stanford, they established a new schedule, because Chuck was training the girls in how to identify watchers and defend themselves (and each other) among other things. As well as that, he had his duties as "Dummy" to attend to. When Jill told him what his mother had said to her about him being rougher and oral sex, he had a long and loud conversation on the phone with Mom, because as far as he was concerned, that wasn't what he'd signed up for, but eventually she convinced him of the same thing as she had Jill, that it was in Jill's best interests for her to be prepared to handle this.

They got those sessions out of the way as quickly as they could, because it was making all of them uncomfortable, as while the first time had been OK, continuing it felt wrong, and the whole reason they were doing it made them angry. They understood that if Jill was ordered to do something by Fulcrum, they might have to do more to prepare her for it, but they were going to hold off on that until it was absolutely necessary.

* * *

Aside from having to go off and do training for other aspects of her 'duties' to Fulcrum (their training wasn't as useful as the training Chuck gave her), Jill didn't hear much from 'Uncle Bernie' or anyone else in Fulcrum for the rest of their third year. They did make excuses about having to do extra preparation for their final year to get out of going home to Los Angeles in the break, so that she wouldn't have to see him and perhaps get other demands from him, especially demands of a personal nature.

The lack of demands from Fulcrum also gave them more time to investigate them and try to find a way to bring them down, though from what they did manage to unearth, Fulcrum didn't seem to be doing much of anything except recruit and train people, it was almost as if they were waiting for something. They kept renewing the surveillance equipment around Jill's family's house, but there was rarely any sign that Fulcrum were watching them.

In the meantime, Anna had been getting more and more involved with the group's work over the year, doing a lot of computer work with Chuck and doing missions with some or all of Chuck, Casey or Mary. Ellie and Auntie Em rarely did missions. They were normally doing analysis work, and Ellie's neurology studies on top of the rest of her studies was taking more of her time.

* * *

Palo Alto - April 2001

After the initial strangeness with Bryce that Chuck hadn't paid a lot of attention to in their second year, things had settled down between them, he finally seemed to be embracing the fiction of them being best buddies and room mates without pushing for more as he'd been doing in the first year and a half. Also, with him being out a lot more, Chuck and Jill had been spending more time together in 'their' room, to make it look more like a normal relationship where they'd be together at whichever place their room mate was away.

Of course, if Chuck had looked for anything other than Sammie in the CIA's systems, he might have found the records of Bryce being recruited by them in his second year, and that may have warded off some of the issues that came up in later years. Professor Fleming not giving into his proclivities to pander to his own personal gratification probably would have saved everyone a lot of problems too.

Considering how the CIA prided themselves on their vetting processes, it was surprising that they didn't find any red-flags when they investigated George Fleming. They should have been looking into him a lot more closely than they did, especially considering that he was the one recruiting for them at one of America's premier universities.

Fleming had flagged Bryce Larkin for recruitment on the basis of his background and personality profile results, because on paper he was perfect, estranged from his family, narcissistic, ruthless and self centred, extremely intelligent, athletic, good looking enough to get into most girls' pants, just what they were looking for. When he approached Larkin, every indication was that he was in fact the very embodiment of those traits, so Fleming had made his play and he'd swallowed the 'duty to your country' and secret agent spiels hook, line and sinker. After he'd hooked Larkin, things had gone quite well for a while, as Larkin had easily landed any potential female recruits for him with little effort on his part, and he'd also softened up any of the female students who'd caught his eye for him, so George had had a very good year that year.

Of course, finding out that Larkin wasn't anywhere near as bright as his transcripts had made him out to be put a bit of a damper on that, and George was going to cut him loose when it looked like he was going to fail all of his classes, even though he measured up in nearly every other respect because, after all, George had his reputation to protect and he wasn't going to let himself be dragged down by putting forward the pretty boy equivalent of a dumb blonde. Then Larkin actually got down on his knees to beg for another chance, and before George knew what was happening, his fly was unzipped and Larkin was going to town on him.

George didn't regard himself as being queer or anything like that, and would have vehemently argued with anyone that called him that, hell, he would have sued the lying bastards, but Larkin had such a marvellous mouth! Of all of the students that he'd traded favours for grades with, and there had been hundreds, if not more, none could do anything like what he could. That exhibition at once both explained his faked transcripts, and ensured George's help in fabricating the results to keep Larkin there. As long as Larkin kept using his talented mouth, George would cover up his lack of talent in other areas.

Bryce did what he had to to ensure that Fleming got him through his second, third and fourth years at Stanford, because he was having a hell of a time playing secret agent. He couldn't understand what those others were whining about with their bitching about 'morally grey areas' though, they were going to be in the fucking CIA and that gave them the ultimate get out of jail free card, literally! They could do shit that would get civilians thrown in prison or sent to the chair and get away with it because they were working for the government, what's not to love about that?

About three quarters of the way through their final year, all of Fleming's students had to take his Subliminal Imagery course, and then do the test at the end of it. When Bryce came in for his weekly session with Fleming just after that test, though, Fleming was bouncing off the walls with excitement. Considering that he usually didn't get that way until AFTER Bryce had worked his magic on him, Bryce asked what he was so excited about, and Fleming started raving about the test results.

Bryce asked him Fleming what HIS score was because, after all, what else mattered? But Fleming just dismissed his results, saying something about them being 'something in the high eighties I think' and started waving another test result at him "But look at this, your room mate Bartowski scored over ninety eight percent! That's the only result we've ever seen that's been over the ninety two percent threshold that we were told to look for!"

"George, George baby, what's so important about that?"

"What's so important? This is the Omaha Project Bryce, the most important project we have! We've been looking for a suitable candidate to be the focal point for this project for years and now I'VE found him!"

"You're not making any sense George, what does this Omaha Project do? What's the objective?"

"The objective Bryce? Only to create a super agent! When they load this into Bartowski he'll be the most important agent in the CIA! Hell, he'll be the most important agent period! No-one else will matter after that, they'll team him up with the best of the rest and they'll get all the important assignments, their team be unbeatable!"

The idea of being pushed aside before he even began by BARTOWSKI of all people infuriated Bryce, and on top of that, hearing 'the best of the rest' brought just one person to mind, that bitch who'd shot him down without a thought when he'd turned on the charm after they'd completed their mission, the Ice Queen. She'd apparently only been working for a couple of years now but she already had all of the top agents worried because she was perfect, apparently there wasn't anything she couldn't do, and what's more she was absolutely stunning, shit, she might even be able to turn HIM straight.

He snorted to himself at that, like that was going to happen, but THAT sort of arm candy would get him into anywhere he wanted, and it would also drag in any guy that he wanted. Besides, the bitch had to pay for dissing him like that, he'd never failed to charm anyone before and he wasn't going to let HER ruin his record. Obviously, the key to getting everything he wanted was this one stupid test, so George was about to have the time of his life. He'd just have to make sure that Fleming didn't die of pleasure before Bartowski had been dismissed, and the paperwork had gone through to the CIA to confirm that Bryce Larkin was actually the one who'd scored ninety eight percent in their stupid test.

It looked touch and go a few times, but Fleming survived the experience, and by the time Bryce left his office, they'd fabricated and lodged the paperwork for the case to have Bartowski kicked out for cheating, and Fleming had sent off the paperwork to the CIA to show that Bryce Larkin had scored ninety eight percent in the Subliminal Imagery test. Bryce was feeling pretty good with the world at that point.

* * *

Just when they were beginning to think that they were going to manage to get through university without Jill having to give in to any of Fulcrum's disgusting demands, she got a call from 'Uncle Bernie'. When Chuck came home, the scene was pretty much the same as it had been when she'd been told that they owned her and she had to do anything they told her to or else. When Chuck asked what their demands were, Jill gave a hysterical laugh "Oh, just that I've got to break up with you and seduce Bryce Larkin to get him to come across to Fulcrum!"

That was enough of a shock to make Chuck collapse into a chair at the other end of the table. When he'd recovered, he asked whether they were giving her any leeway? In answer to that Jill pushed her laptop towards him, to show the pictures of her family at home, with crosshairs superimposed over each of them. There was no mistaking that threat.

Chuck went to get himself a drink, as the girls obviously had quite a head start on him in that respect, and then they started talking about what they'd have to do. Engineering the situation shouldn't be too bad, especially with extra time they'd been spending at the room over the past two and a half years, but there were other concerns. Chuck looked at Jill "You CAN'T have sex with him without a condom Jill, the risk is of Aids just too high with him being gay, especially as he's so arrogant that he probably doesn't bother most of the time."

Jill nodded "We thought of that Chuck, and I've had another talk to your Mom about how to talk him into insisting on it, so I think we've got that covered, but there's something else…."

Chuck looked at them, wondering what could be worse than that, until Anna said it "Anal, with his preferences, it's just about guaranteed, and in case you've forgotten, Jill has never done that with her practice dummy."

He just slumped in his seat and said "Fuck!" dejectedly. The girls nodded sadly in agreement.

Partly to put that off, and partly because it was logical, Chuck suggested that they go back to his room and have a fight in front of Bryce BEFORE they did anything about that, because it'd look rather suspicious if Jill just jumped on Bryce when things were OK between them, so they did that. They couldn't work out what Bryce was so smug about when they were there though, not until Chuck got called into the Dean's office to be expelled for cheating anyway.

They did what they had to so that Jill would be prepared, and talked through and role played various scenarios in hope that she'd be able to minimise the sex involved, then Jill went to see Larkin, wearing a bug so that they would know to come in if anything started getting out of hand. She was lucky, both in that he wasn't interested in doing much with a woman and that he had a short fuse anyway, so she got through that with minimal sex and had him set up, contented, for the talk she had to have with him. Yeah, the other girls were right, luckily, men were so easy.

When they were talking, playing up to Larkin's enormous ego was all it took for Jill to convince him to have a meeting with Uncle Bernie in that first session, which meant that she didn't have to see him again after that.

Larkin also did most of the legwork to spread the stories around the university, because he told everyone that Jill had come to him, upset about Chuck being caught cheating, and he'd rocked her world when he banged her every which way. Of course that meant that Jill was pretty much dismissed as a two timing slut by most of the crowd on campus, but she was just about finished there and she still had Anna (and Chuck for that matter), so her reputation on the Stanford campus wasn't anything she was at all worried about. She just had to finish her exams and leave.

Uncle Bernie knew how to deal with people like Larkin, so he offered him fame and anything he wanted, including Jill of course, but while Larkin grabbed the other things offered with both hands, he was just 'been there, done that' as far as Jill went because he had his eye on the Ice Queen. That meant that Fulcrum pretty much lost interest in Jill, as she'd bagged them the prize that they wanted but they couldn't see any more use for her. While they weren't about to let off the hook in case they came up with something else they wanted to use her for, Fulcrum essentially forgot about Jill after she did that one job.

Of course, letting Larkin get him expelled just before he got his degrees wasn't something Chuck was about to let happen. So, he collected all the evidence to prove that Larkin and Fleming had framed him and went back in for another quiet meeting with the Dean, taking a rather imposing FBI agent with him this time. It didn't take too much to convince the Dean that they had ample evidence for a successful lawsuit against the university, and criminal charges against those involved in his expulsion using false evidence as well, so the university quietly arranged for him to do all of his final exams in private so he'd get the degrees he deserved. On top of that, Stanford would make the arrangements smooth the way for him to go on and do his post graduate degrees at Caltech.

With the arrangements done and the need to stay out of sight. Chuck just settled down in the apartment and got to work on the assignments for their intelligence group. Without going to class, or going anywhere really, he had ample time to be extremely productive.

* * *

Boston - April 2002

Sarah Walker (or rather the Ice Queen as that was the only thing she was known as to most people in the CIA) completed an unprecedented number of missions in the three years before she graduated from Harvard and what's more, her success rate was unparalleled. Yes, she'd been caught in the position where the only way to get out alive was to sleep with the mark a few times early on, and she was certain that Graham had set her up for that at least two of those times, but while the memory of them made her feel physically sick, they represented less than 1% of her missions, and she'd promised herself that that wouldn't happen again, either she or all of her targets would be dead first. Jane had made a half hearted attempt to talk her out of that, but from her expression, Sarah got the impression that she wished that she'd made herself that promise a long time ago, and stuck to it.

One of the hardest things for her to do on many of her missions was to refrain from killing her partner, because the bastards were so arrogant that they just couldn't accept the fact that there were women who didn't want them. She couldn't believe the number of times that she'd just had to walk away from them as they kept talking, because no matter how many times she told them that she wasn't interested and it wasn't happening, they just kept trying to spin their lines, sure that she'd come around, it was ridiculous!

As she came up to April in 2002, Sarah was getting nervous, because she felt that she was coming to the end of a significant period of her life. She felt that she was being ridiculous, but 'Aunt Jane' was the closest thing she'd had to family since that day her father took her away from everyone she loved, and presuming that they made her a full agent when she graduated, she'd be losing that in just over a month. Jane could see this and sat her down to talk about it.

"OK first, yes, I know I bitched about going backward when I took on the job of being your handler four years ago, but you have to know that our time together has been rewarding for me too don't you?" Sarah nodded tentatively at that.

"Secondly, even if I stop being your handler, I can, and will, still be your mentor, that is a proven culture in the CIA and not even Langston Graham can get away with trying to fight that. The only acceptable circumstances for preventing an agent from contacting their mentor is if the agent is undercover where any communications are a risk. Leaving an agent in those circumstances for too long is also against the rules, so if I don't hear from you for too long, I've got grounds to get an investigation started, and you better believe me that if I don't hear from you at least once every few months, I expect at least once a month, I WILL be screaming for an investigation!"

"Honey, you're going to be hell on wheels and turn this agency on its head, and I'm going to be right there, cheering you on, OK?" This time Sarah's nod was more confident.

"So stop worrying about things that aren't going to happen, and start worrying about how I'm going to kick your arse if you don't ace all your final exams and assignments!" That got the smile she loved to see from Sarah, and they put aside their cares for the rest of the night.

Sarah did ace all of her final exams and assignments, graduating cum laude on her law degree and magna laude on her business management. She and Jane didn't really have a chance to celebrate that though, because Graham flew her out as soon as she'd finished her last exam, with no ceremony on reaching full agent status either, she was just handed an envelope on the plane that held her credentials. All she and Jane had time for was to exchange their contact details.

Graham kept her on the go all the time with no more than a day or two between missions, so she didn't have a chance to get back for Jane's induction as the Deputy Director of Operations for the CIA, but at least with Jane holding that position, she should be able to track where Sarah went from that point because all field agents reported through her.

From the day she finished her exams, Sarah went for eight months without any significant breaks, just bouncing from one mission to the next. Her supposed 'down time' was usually spent travelling to the next mission. Then, at the start of 2003, she was assigned to work with a team of women, and when she got there, she was thrilled to find that the one she was actually partnered with was Carina Miller. She and Carina had worked together fifteen to twenty times (depending on who's definition of 'worked together' they used) and they meshed well professionally and personally. In fact, Carina was about as close as she'd gotten to having a friend since she started this life at that point, but one of the other women on the team, Zondra Rizzo, quickly gained that status as well. There were raised eyebrows from both of them when Sarah admitted that the reason she'd wanted to go out one night was that it was her twenty first (seeing as according to the records that was over two years ago), but they hugged her and did their best to make it a night for her to remember happily.

The name of that team was stupid (CAT Squad, really?) and they had a traitor in the group who'd kept betraying them and got far too many people killed, but they achieved quite a bit in the two years that they were together. When Amy's final betrayal resulted in her being the one who was killed in the trap that she'd tried to set for them, someone (and Sarah's money was on Graham) disbanded the group and sent them back to their own agencies (CIA for Sarah, DEA for Carina and FBI for Zondra) without warning. It wasn't just them arguing that their successes were cause to keep the group together, whether it was just the three surviving members of the original team or they brought someone else in, but every argument got squashed, and it was a while before the three women saw each other again.

Sarah's reaction when she was called into Graham's office to meet her new partner was 'Oh fuck no!' because she remembered this bastard from that mission they'd done together when she was back at Harvard, as an agent he was very mediocre, but as a person he was a total failure. She tried to have a private word with Graham to ask why she was being partnered with a second rate agent like this, given her record, but he refused her any opportunity to do so. That was how she was made partners with Bryce Larkin in 2005.


	4. We'll Always Have Omaha

**With regard to the comment on the Polish names** **in Chapter 1,** **I said that all the people were Polish, not necessarily the names.** **I** **n the case of the** **fe** **male names, in some cases I used the variants from Hungary or other countries just over the border, because I preferred them and I expect that people there** **also** **choose** **version** **s for the same reason** **, but yes, I screwed up** **Eleonora** **as I remembered it wrong** **.** **BTW** **Ema was Czech. O** **n the male variants, I selected Janek** **from a list of known variants because I preferred it. On the Frost Queen, as I said, I was going by Google Translate.**

 **Usual disclaimers, no rights to any characters portrayed and this isn't the real world.**

Palo Alto - April 2001

Bryce was angry, after he'd managed to get Bartowski out of his hair, and banged Jill Roberts, just like he had the rest of the top five babes on campus, everything was supposed to be right with the world, but just about everyone on campus was looking at him as if he was something that they'd scraped off their shoes. He also heard what they were saying about him, and he wasn't going to let that go unpunished!

After that business with setting up Bartowski and his test results, Fleming was suspicious when Bryce came to him again, eager to please. By that stage he'd heard that the administration was doing an audit of his course results for the year, officially they were just doing a standard spot check but someone he knew in records had told him that they were tearing apart everything and going back to cross-check it against the physical paperwork, he'd never heard of them doing anything like that before and he was worried. Even then, he almost buckled to Bryce's persuasion, it was only his fear of that audit that had stopped him from giving in to Bryce's demands again and altering those other students' results.

Two months later, Bryce was out of there with his degree, and Fleming was facing a major investigation, because that audit had shown serious discrepancies in the results of his courses. Of course, as soon as he left campus, Bryce didn't give Fleming another thought, he was moving forward, he just had to finish up at the Farm now and then it was on to the Omaha Project! He also had this deal with Fulcrum to look forward to, because as soon as he was loaded with this program thing that was the whole purpose of the Omaha Project, he was going to take it to Fulcrum and be treated like a king, just as he should be.

* * *

Camp Peary - June 2001

Larkin wasn't too impressed when he found that where he'd expected to breeze through the Farm in a few days on his way to the Omaha Project, he was there for nearly five months, and there was no 'breeze'ing involved, it was long hours and he was dropping into bed, exhausted, at the end of each day. On top of that, he also had to put the time into cultivating the people he needed to ensure that his records showed him to be the best of the bunch, he hadn't worked this hard to have the chance of a lifetime taken away from him because some old fool failed him on something at the Farm. He could do OK on the physical stuff, but he knew he'd need to cover his arse on the rest of it,

Through one of the ones he was cultivating to fix his records, Larkin found out that the powers that be had apparently decided that there was no point fast tracking him through the Farm because that program thing wasn't ready yet, which made him swear, because the longer he spent here, the more chance there was of something going wrong, like that stupid fucking 'Seduction School'. The old fool who was the instructor failed him just because he screwed what he wanted out of the women who were his marks on their exercises. The old fool came out with some bullshit about taking the easy way out by having sex with your marks being lazy and that he needed to learn how to do the job properly, so he was going to make him through again in the next rotation, in a couple of months. Fuck that! Oh well, screwing a middle aged woman a couple of times more to get his records fixed had been a small price to pay for getting out of there.

When Larkin left the Farm, his records showed that he'd been better than anyone else there, in fact his record was better than anyone's but the Ice Queen, and he was at last on his way to his destiny.

* * *

Undisclosed Location - November 2001

When he reached the Omaha Project though, he had more problems, because he couldn't get his records fixed for him there, the scientists were in charge of the results and they weren't about to allow the 'integrity of their results to be compromised', or some crap like that. They put him through a whole battery of tests just like Fleming's, and then started jumping up and down when the best results he could get were between eighty five and eighty eight percent.

They called Fleming and he tried to say that Bryce must have fluked the other result, but after they heard about the audit and on-going investigation into him at Stanford, someone at the CIA made an arbitrary decision that he represented too much of a risk if he talked and sent an order out to someone they had off the books. A few nights later, an explosion wiped out Fleming and all of his records.

They kept Larkin there for eight months, running more tests and arguing over whether the original designer's threshold of ninety two percent had been an arbitrary figure or a 'nice to have'. Eventually the powers that be decided that, on the basis of his record, Larkin was too valuable an agent to risk on something like that, so he was removed from the Omaha Project and sent off to be a field agent.

* * *

The fact was, Larkin was fairly successful, and while not brilliant himself, he did have a genius for finding people who could get him what he needed, and to make him look good. He also had a definite knack for finding a scapegoat to cover for him whenever he screwed up. The fact that he could charm the pants off most men and women to get what he needed and had no qualms about doing whatever it took to get the job done and advance his interests without a second thought didn't hurt him at all either.

What that added up to was that by most standards, Larkin was a reasonable agent, but on paper he was one of the best, which was in part how he ended up sitting in Langston Graham's office two and a half years later in early 2005, being introduced to his new partner, Sarah Walker, the Ice Queen.

* * *

Arcadia - June 2001

When they'd all finished their final exams, Chuck, Anna and Jill packed up, let the apartment go and went home to Los Angeles. After spending over four years together in Palo Alto, going back to their families' homes was hard for Anna and Jill, especially when Jill's parents were asking questions about who was actually Chuck's girlfriend, because Uncle Bernie had said he'd heard something about Jill being with Chuck at Stanford?

But there was something more than that, because Jill was moody and out of sorts. They knew that something was really up when Jill snapped at Anna and stormed out because Anna made a joke about telling her parents that it was actually a three way and they were planning on keeping it that way. Jill wouldn't answer any of their calls after that, and when Anna went over to see her, she was told that she'd gone to New York about a job opportunity. Apparently they'd trained her too well though, because when they tried to find her, she'd vanished.

Anna was a wreck, obviously, but they stopped her running off to New York, pointing out that they had a better chance of finding Jill with the systems that they had at their disposal. That was the first time that Anna ever hurt Chuck, because she snapped at him that that had worked out really well for him, finding his precious Sammie, hadn't it? He just looked at her for a while, then turned and walked out without a word and they heard his bike bellowing off up the street.

She really fell apart when she realised what she'd done and he wouldn't answer his phone so she could tell him how sorry she was. When Chuck came back at 3 in the morning, Anna was still sitting in the living room, waiting to apologise, and he just took her by the hand and they went to bed to hold each other.

Anna finally got a letter from Jill about four months later to explain what had happened. She hadn't been completely honest with them when she told them that everything had gone to plan with Larkin, as the first time she'd gotten him to wear a condom, but the second time she hadn't, and she got something from him, not Aids, pregnant.

She'd never expected to be pregnant and therefore had never paid attention to what the signs were, so she didn't work it out until the books said it was too late to terminate. On top of that, for all that being a homosexual was regarded as a sin, she'd been raised as a strict Catholic, and therefore it felt wrong to get rid of the baby. That was why she'd gone off to someone in her extended family who would support her through the pregnancy and give her somewhere to raise the baby.

After the baby was born, she was planning to build a new life for her and the baby somewhere well away from everyone that she'd let down. She finished by saying that she'd gotten someone to post the letter well away from where she was to prevent anyone finding her. Hopefully, if she disappeared off the face of the Earth, Fulcrum wouldn't do anything to her family.

* * *

Arcadia - October 2001

Anna broke down when she read the letter, hurt that Jill hadn't thought that they could deal with this together. That may have been why she snapped when her parents started to pressure her about settling down with a good Chinese boy instead of running around with her wild American boyfriend. She was more than a little shocked about that, because she'd always thought that they loved Chuck and were happy with her fake relationship, but obviously they'd just regarded it as a phase that they expected her to grow out of, but when she came back from university and hadn't, they'd decided to finish it for her.

After a brief argument, Anna went upstairs, packed a couple of bags, grabbed her laptop and walked out, telling them that she'd get someone to come and get the rest of her things. When she got to the B&B (Bartowski & Burdon) house, she asked if she could stay in their guest room until she found herself a place, but Chuck just took her bags and led her to his room. She was in no state to be by herself at the moment, and for that matter, neither was he really.

They laid on the bed, holding each other and talking about Jill and what they were going to do until Ellie came up to get them for dinner. All the women came up to hug and kiss Anna and tell her that she was staying here, then they settled down to dinner. The talk over dinner was distinctly girl talk, rather more so than usual, and suddenly Chuck froze as he realised the point that they were driving home, or at least Ellie was. He'd always been outnumbered three to one at home, but with Anna joining the household as they'd all agreed, it was four to one and Ellie was throwing down the gauntlet. He didn't need to look to Ellie, but he did anyway, and she had a shit eating grin on her face. Their mother shook her head at Ellie and then asked "Have you two decided what you're going to do? I expect that you've made some plans at least?"

Chuck grinned at Anna because he told her that this would come up straight away. "Yeah Mom, we're going to float two cover businesses so we can switch and change when we need to, Anna will be the nominal head of Lotus Security Systems and I'll be the nominal head of Piranha Security & Technology. We'll mostly offer consulting services, though we'll do some technical services as well. We're thinking of getting premises…." Anna gave him a 'WE are?' look at that, but he continued "Possibly with living quarters NOW (shooting a look at Ellie) in Pasadena, close to the tech business area, and also close to Caltech for when I go back to do my post grad studies. It will also give us a different location to run operations out of."

He could see his mother do the mental shift from Mom to operative mode as she considered that last, nodding. "Yes, it would be good to spread that around a little."

Chuck looked from Anna to his mother, a question in his eyes, and when she nodded he turned to Auntie Em, then Ellie, getting a nod from each in turn before he turned back to Anna "Anna, it's time we told you a few things…." With that, he launched into the full story, only leaving out his parents, Auntie Em, Auntie Di and Uncle Roan's past as KGB spies, just framing them all as family friends. His mother, Auntie Em and Ellie also spoke up at times to go into more detail about or clarify some things.

He saw his mother's mouth quirk as she tried not to smile when they reached some parts of the story, thinking about how that bastard Graham had given her, them, the perfect back story when he created the fiction of Agent Frost to try and set her up to get her killed by Volkoff. She was probably also thinking about how close Casey had been with his comment about the CIA creating Agent Frost to convince people that they had the biggest, baddest agents, as Graham WAS CIA and that was what he was trying to sell Volkoff on.

Staying with Chuck, Anna's upset and anger over how Jill had disappeared faded and she settled into her new life as part of the family. Her own family had been quite shocked the day that she'd turned up with a team of NSA removalists (including John Casey) to get the rest of her things, especially when she handed her mother a cheque to repay what they'd spent to send her to Stanford, and the cost of her car. Her mother got the message, she was returning what they'd paid to ensure that they had no claim over her, because they were no longer any part of her life. As she was going to leave though, Anna stopped and turned back, wanting to lash out.

"By the way mother, Chuck isn't my boyfriend, he's my best friend. That's all he will ever be, even though he's by far the best man I could ever hope to meet, because I'm a lesbian! He has supported me in this without question, even though my own family never would!" With that she ran out, with a smirking John Casey behind her. When they were in the car and out of sight of her family, John said 'good for you' and gently asked if she was OK and she broke down, crying on his shoulder. When she'd recovered enough she kissed him on the cheek, giving him a look of thanks before they drove off.

* * *

Even though she said that she didn't want to be found, they did search for Jill, adding that to the search for Sammie. They still hadn't any luck with that search, but something had been catching Chuck's eye over the past couple of years, the increasing number of references to a young agent who was only ever referred to as the 'Ice Queen', in that time she'd apparently completed more missions than anyone else with an unparalleled success rate, and comments about her were usually around the fact that the bitch was stunning but inhuman, and that no-one could stand up to or match her because she was a robot. These stories intrigued Chuck, because he was getting images in his head of a beautiful, deadly cyborg (something that had his mother and Ellie telling him proved that he watched too much sci-fi, but Auntie Em and Anna were kinder), so he was following any references to the Ice Queen as well.

* * *

They searched for suitable premises for 'their' offices (Anna always made air quotes when she said 'our offices' because Chuck was the only one who was driven to do this) and finally decided on a property with a two storey warehouse building on the edge of a nice residential district, and the property also included the smaller single storey building beside it. As a warehouse, the ground floor of the main building was at least double height, so with the offices above it was more like three stories. The buildings were vacant and run down, but sound, and Anna was shocked when Chuck paid the lower two million plus price that they'd negotiated for a quick and simple sale as if it was nothing. That made Emma sit her down and explain how they'd been getting quite well paid as fifteen people for over a decade now, and they'd been investing that money profitably, so the family was quite well off, well, wealthy actually.

After that talk with Emma, Anna was less surprised when she saw the extent of Chuck's plans to renovate the building, cladding the entire building in armour glass two way mirrors (which WAS actually armoured glass, capable of handling impacts from over 30mm rounds), splitting three quarters of the ground floor into two levels and adding a couple of basement levels. The ground floor would nominally be made up of the offices for four businesses, Lotus Security Services, Piranha Security & Technology, Charlemagne Computers Etc and Novatech Industries with apartments above them, as Chuck had decided with a bigger building it'd be more believable to have four small business offices, and he had plans to expand their operations down the track.

The family was amused with Chuck's 'modest' business plans, but conceded that they were quite logical and sound for their operations, so Auntie Di arranged for the appropriate government contractors to come in and start working on it. As they got the business(es) off the ground, Chuck and Anna talked two other good hackers they knew and respected (even though Chuck had thwarted their attempts to hack into government sites more than a few times, but they didn't know that) into joining them, Jeff Barnes, known as 'Roscoe', and Michael Johnson, better known by his handle 'Skip'. They were all working from home while the building was being renovated, but referrals from people who knew them from the hacker world and Stanford (and Auntie Di and Uncle Roan quietly directing people their way) resulted in their reputation spreading quickly, so quickly that they had to start thinking about bringing even more people on to handle the workload.

* * *

Washington - November 2001

It was around this time that Diane and Roan were contacted by people from the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) and Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). Apparently their records hadn't been destroyed as they'd thought, or not all of them anyway, because it appeared that some of them had been taken by people who left the KGB. The idea of bowing to the wishes to the ones who'd thrown them to the wolves and abandoned them over ten years before, and were only paying attention to them now because they'd obviously managed to survive and flourish on their own didn't appeal to them at all, but the GRU was a large and powerful organisation, and the SVU could cause them trouble too, so they had to come up with a plan to deal with this.

It confused and upset Anna when Chuck, Ellie, Mary and Emma suddenly dropped everything and flew to D.C. without her, asking her not to say anything to anyone, especially Casey. Chuck embraced her and promised to tell her what he could when they got back, but this wasn't his secret to tell and he needed permission.

In Washington, Diane and Roan slipped all their tails and met up with the rest of the family at a farm a little out of the city. What it came down to was that there was no way of standing up to something as powerful as the GRU, or the SVU for that matter. That being said, they weren't about to throw away the lives that they'd been building for well over twenty years, nearly thirty for Diane and Roan, just because some bureaucrat had now decided that they may be useful, seeing how they'd survived being abandoned without a second thought ten years ago.

What was agreed was that they'd feed information through the channels that would be established, but it wouldn't be anything damaging to their new country, and where possible they'd use it to manipulate the GRU or SVU into helping them with their plans. Diane gave a little laugh when Mary said that, and Roan joined her when he caught onto what she was thinking. Indeed, the might of the Russian Federation had no chance of besting THESE people!

With the core idea agreed, Chuck brought up something else, he'd looked into the people who'd contacted Diane and Roan when he got into the GRU and SVU systems to try and find out what was planned for them, and he'd found that there were other ex deep cover operatives that these people were after as well. These people had all been abandoned the same way as their family had while they were in deep cover back at the end of ninety one, so there may be a chance of getting them on their side to work with them on this. He pointed out that among the names he found, there were three quite notable KBG operatives.

The first was Marco Kostov, who was using the name Nylund now, he'd gone through the KGB's Spetsnaz brigades before he became an operative. Mary nodded, she remembered Kostov, he was a hell of an operative and a good man. The second was Gertrude Verbanski, she took over from Mary as the KBG's top operative, then went into deep cover towards the end and was abandoned when the KGB was disbanded. The third was Ilsa Trinchina, she was a promising young operative on the rise who'd also been forgotten about when the KGB closed down. There were other possibles, but these three had been important enough that the GRU and SVU would be making a serious effort to go after them, so if they were going to approach them, they had to do it quickly.

* * *

They all agreed, and went after Marco first, because he was in Washington. Marco recognised Mary and started looking for the team he was sure that she'd have with her, but she laughed, saying in Russian _'Relax Marco, it's just me and my son here.'_

That stopped him "Son? I thought you had a daughter?"

"I do, this is my baby boy." Marco snorted at that, as her 'baby' was almost as big as he was, and he could see that he knew what he was doing.

"What are you doing here Maria?"

"We're here to talk, and see whether we can help each other, have you been contacted by the GRU?"

"They've tried, I have no inclination to be their dog again after the way they threw me away."

Mary nodded "That's what we want to talk to you about, can we go somewhere more private?"

The three of them sat down to talk, and by the time they left Marco had joined them.

They contacted Gertrude and Ilsa as soon as they got back to Los Angeles, and they had no trouble getting them, or the other dozen deep cover agents that they contacted, to come over and join them either.

It helped that every one of them knew and trusted at least one person in the group, but the main driver was that they were all as angry as the family and Marco were about the way they'd been abandoned and forgotten by the state, and how these bureaucrats thought that they'd just come to heel as soon as they called them now.

As expected, they were all contacted by the GRU or SVU and 'reluctantly gave in' to their demands. The family were putting together the information that was being fed back, but most of them never saw anyone from the family.

* * *

Pasadena - November 2001

They did see Marco, Gertrude and Ilsa at times, as they got them to support some operations, Marco and Gertrude had the same reaction to the armouries at the house and 'El Castillo' (they'd created a holding company, La Mancha Holdings, to own the Pasadena Properties, and while Chuck quite liked the whimsical name 'Quixote House' for the building, he'd allowed himself to be talked around to agreeing that 'El Castillo' sounded a little more serious and suitable) as Casey did, as they were hard arses who loved their weapons too.

When they got back to Los Angeles, Mary asked Chuck if she could explain this to Anna and he just nodded, going out for a while to clear his head as he was certain that he'd lost his best friend over this. What he didn't know was that Mary, Emma, Diane, Roan and Stephen had all agreed to tell Anna everything, as they knew that that was the only way to prevent a disaster here, so Mary and Emma sat down with Anna and started talking. Anna was shocked, as finding out that Auntie Mary, Auntie Em, Diane and Roan had been KGB spies was the last thing she expected when she sat down for this discussion.

As they talked, Anna got an education on the geopolitical situation when she was a child, what had been done to the ones who'd been inserted in deep cover around the world when the Soviet Union had collapsed and how they'd had to build new lives for themselves after that. She also came to understand why Chuck hadn't been able to tell her any of this because, as he'd said, the secrets weren't his to tell, they were his parents' and the rest of the family's.

When they finished talking, Anna was shell shocked, so when they asked if she was OK with this, she slowly shook her head and then realised what she'd done and said "No! Sorry, I'm still trying to get my head around this, but yes, now that I know the truth I'm OK with it, and so relieved that I wasn't being cut out of an important part of the family because you didn't trust me, which was what I was feeling when you left."

Mary started to say "Chuck couldn't…." but Anna cut her off "No, I know, it wasn't his secret to tell, he tried to tell me that before you left but I couldn't get it them. I understand now!"

They all hugged then, and tried to find Chuck, when they couldn't get him, Anna sent him a text "I understand now, please come home!" He got home half an hour later and after an extended period of relieved hugging, they knew that they'd be OK.

* * *

Langley - April 2005

Sarah knew that this was going to be the assignment from hell before they left Graham's office, because it was obvious from what he was saying that THIS was his Golden Boy that everyone was talking about. She didn't believe for a minute that the idiot that she'd been forced to do that mission with had become the agent that everyone described as Graham's Golden Boy, but she wasn't the perfect robot that everyone said 'Graham's Enforcer' was either.

Graham's decision made sense with that little nugget though, because on paper it would be logical to put the Enforcer together with the Golden Boy to create the ultimate team, but the problem was that his record was obviously fabricated. It would be interesting to discover how THAT had happened, especially as Graham obviously believed what was on file.

* * *

Graham didn't know it, but he was paving the road to his own destruction with Larkin, because this was the second time he'd done this, taking the reports at face value without confirming the details. He'd done that with the Jaworskis and their friends and had gotten burned, his attempt to make Jaworski concentrate on his project had lost him Jaworski and Winterbottom and set his project back by years, even now the Omaha Project hadn't reached its goal. On top of that, he was always having to look over his shoulder, waiting for the Frost Queen to appear because they'd had word that she'd just disappeared after being Volkoff's Enforcer for one and a half years or so.

That was why he'd pushed Walker so hard, the early reports on her had said that she was far more capable than any agent that those working with her had ever seen, so he'd pulled out all the stops. He'd made a mistake with that first handler, the man had had a reputation for pushing his charges to be the best that they could be, but his file hadn't mentioned that he was an idiot, trying to force himself a girl as lethal as he knew her to be? Shit!

Bentley had worked out well though, she'd been a hell of an agent in the field, but she'd obviously crossed someone to be dumped in that dead end role she was in. That had worked out in his favour though because she'd jumped at the deal he offered her. Best deal he'd ever made! Now he had his own Enforcer who by all reports was capable of dealing with the Frost Queen, wherever that bitch may be, and for that matter Bentley had been the best DDO they'd ever had, too.

He couldn't work out why Walker was so opposed to Larkin though, every other female agent was clamouring to be able to work with the legendary Golden Boy, but when she saw him she almost pulled out her gun and shot him. Was she one of the multitude of women who's hearts he'd broken, was that it?

Whatever it was, they'd have to work it out, it had cost too much to get these two to where they are and he needed something to justify it. Walker had been more than pulling her weight, in six years she'd successfully completed more missions than ten ordinary agents do over the course of their career, and she'd been at university for half of that! While Larkin's reports were superlative though, he hadn't shown the tangible results they needed to justify the spend, especially with what wasting basically a year of the Omaha Project on him had cost.

Damn Fleming, he'd died too easy, screwing everything up the way he had by telling them that Larkin was the prodigal son, the Omaha candidate. Their screw ups had lost him the exclusive control of the Omaha Project, because the budget arguments had given the NSA the opportunity they needed to get their hooks into the project. That was why he had to team Larkin up with Walker, to get the results he needed to justify what they'd spent on him.

* * *

The first time Larkin made a move on Sarah, he was in a cast for a week, she'd stopped short of doing permanent damage, just, but they'd put the cast on his wrist to immobilise it to let it heal quicker. He backed off for a while, but he was so deluded that he couldn't believe that she could not want him, even if he wasn't attracted to her as a woman, so of course he tried it again, and again.

The next two years were like purgatory for Sarah, not quite hell but not too far off. For a start, she'd had to work harder on the missions to cover for the failings of her 'partner', whether it was due to being incapable of doing what was required of him, or screwing up because he refused to do what he was told or was trying to charm her or some other woman, she always had to put in extra effort to ensure that their mission succeeded. In the reports that were filed though, HE was the one credited with the success of the missions, she'd torn into Graham more than once about that, and he'd seemed genuinely confused when he said he'd look into it, but she'd never gotten a real answer from him about it.

Then, of course, were Larkin's repeated attempts to charm her, no matter how many times that she told him that she wasn't interested, and the way he'd push their 'public displays of affection' on missions to the absolute limit. He'd almost gotten them thrown out of functions where they were running missions more than a few times when he pushed things way past appropriate boundaries, but no matter how much she hurt him for that as soon as they were somewhere she could get away with it, and she'd put him in hospital a few times, he was still certain that she was just putting on an act to pretend that she wasn't love with him (his words), the man was a lunatic.

He'd gone too far this time though, she was going to kill him! They were just about to slip away to go after their mission objective at the consulate, but he'd gotten them thrown out of the consulate and blown the whole mission by putting his hand up her dress and into her pants in plain sight in the ball room! The rest of the team had to stop her from killing him for what he'd tried to do to her, let alone blowing the mission, when they were outside. She could see on their faces that they wanted to the same to the bastard, but they put her straight onto a plane back to the States.

Graham didn't know what to say to her, as he couldn't believe that Larkin could have been stupid enough to do that either, so he sent her to Europe on a mission to calm down before she exploded all over Washington, and put Larkin on suspension when he was dragged back in disgrace.

* * *

Pasadena - January 2002

When 'El Castillo' was finished, Mary made a few more phone calls to stock the armoury to Chuck's requirements, and the new armoury was more extensive than the one at the house (when they'd acquired their 'shadow team' of ex-KGB operatives, Chuck had re-scoped the armoury to cater for them in case they ever needed them for operations). Even though Anna had seen, and had had some input into the plans for El Castillo, she was amazed with how it had come out. All four businesses had computer and electronics labs, and Novatech had other engineering labs as well. They'd agreed that Charlemagne came under Anna's umbrella while Novatech came under Chuck's, so they were each 'boss' of two businesses in the building.

Jeff and Skip had been let into a bit of what the family did, as they were recruited into the cyber side of the group, but the other people they recruited to cater for the escalating workloads remained as 'civilians'.

As amazing as the ground floor was, the 'Dungeon', as Anna named it (they couldn't argue the logic, as castles always seem to have a dungeon underneath) was far more so. For a start, there was the armoury and range on the bottom level, B2, along with the gym, dojo, pool and a plethora of other things. On the upper level, B1, they had the operations centre, meeting rooms, medical centre and whatever else was expected in a base of operations, plus a quite comfortable two bedroom apartment tucked away in one corner, as well as a far more serious computer lab than anything upstairs, the guys at Caltech would have been jealous of what they had there.

Of course, the Bananas in Pyjamas posters that Ellie put up in the Dungeon raised more than a few questions, as did the 'Cuddles Avenue' prefix that showed up for access to the Dungeon levels by the private elevators located in the 'executive bathrooms' on the ground floor, but no-one outside of their groups ever saw those. All up, between purchasing the property and the 'renovations' to create the facility, El Castillo cost over fifteen million, and all but five million of that was paid by the family (Diane had organised allocations for five million for her group's facilities).

Most of level 2 was empty and unfinished, they'd done the structural work and laid in the plumbing, wiring etc, but everything else was being left until it was needed. Level 3 had been fitted out as a number of quite nice apartments, and Chuck intended to move into the one he'd designed for himself when he had the chance.

Chuck loved his family, but the four and a bit years at Stanford had given him a taste of independence, which he missed now that he was back home. It was a given that Anna was going to move in as well, but they hadn't decided whether she'd be sharing his apartment or taking one of her own. She only shared his bed when she was upset about Jill now, which had gotten down to about once a week on average.

* * *

The way Chuck had set things up, he could access his profile from anywhere in the Castle, so he could, say, start something in his office and pick it up in his apartment or the Dungeon. There was one window that he had constantly running and accessed quite often, the one that had the running search engines for Sammie, Jill, the Ice Queen, 'Graham's Enforcer' and the 'Golden Boy'.

About a year after they left Stanford, references to two new players in the CIA started popping up, one, who seemed much like the Ice Queen, was referred to as 'The Enforcer' or 'Graham's Enforcer', while the other one was referred to as 'The Golden Boy' or 'Graham's Golden Boy'.

The more he watched the references to 'The Golden Boy', the more they didn't add up, the other two were obviously hell on wheels, capable of doing just about anything, but while the comments about the Golden Boy were typically rave reviews, especially from women, he wasn't seeing significant achievements being attributed to him. That was why it made even less sense when he saw references to the Enforcer and the Golden Boy working together, why would Graham shackle his best operative with something like that?

He saw the possible logic in it when they were achieving good results together, but those results weren't up to the Enforcer's usual levels, so he still wondered why Graham would do that. Another thing that bothered him was the fact that references to the Ice Queen seemed to have stopped around the time the Enforcer and the Golden Boy were teamed up, had she been killed on a mission somewhere? He didn't know why exactly, but that saddened him, as he'd always had the thought in the back of his head that he'd like to meet this woman, because she sounded incredible.

Then, about two years later, there was a sudden spike of reports about the Ice Queen, with comments about her being free of the tool and back to kicking arses and taking names again. Chuck had to laugh at himself about how ridiculous it was to feel so relieved when he saw that.

* * *

Washington - August 2007

Bryce didn't know what went wrong, one minute he was getting into the act and everything was going well, and the next they were being thrown out of the Consulate and that crazy bitch was trying to kill him. And the fucking support team, the way that they disrespected him, he'd wanted to shoot them, but he could tell from the way they were standing that they were just waiting for him to try that, looking for an excuse to get him before he could get them. Never mind, they'd get theirs, oh yeah they'd get theirs! By the time he got through with them they'd be lucky if Graham just sent them to the North Pole!

He plotted about that all the way back to the States, but the second the door of Graham's office closed, he ripped into him "What the fuck's wrong with you Larkin?"

OK, that was bad, Graham didn't swear, ever. "What do you mean sir?"

"Did you, or didn't you, blow the whole fucking mission by putting your fucking hand up Walker's dress and into her pants in plain sight of everyone in the fucking Consulate Ballroom?"

"Of course not!"

"You're sure about that?"

"Yes sir!"

"That's funny, because that's exactly what Walker says you did! And then there's this!"

Graham hit a key and abruptly pushed the screen around to show the security video from the Consulate. Walker was obviously telling him to back off when he put his hand up her dress, and in doing so he pushed the dress aside so that the camera caught him putting his hand in her pants. Luckily, everyone around them had apparently been too aghast with his actions to note the knives she had strapped to her upper thigh, and her freezing in shock at his actions was only momentary before she got away from him and got herself covered up. Within a minute they were both being led from the room, her much more politely than he was as they apologised to her but explained that she'd have to leave as well, even though she'd done nothing wrong.

When the video was done, Graham said. "I want to shoot you for fucking up my operation this badly, but I have to concede that no-one deserves that right more than Walker, so you're under suspension until she gets back from Europe. If you try to leave town, you'll be tracked down like a dog and dragged back! In fact I'll ask Beckman if she can get her pit bull to do it for me, I understand that Casey has issues with you and is just itching for a chance to shoot you! Get out of my sight! You'll be called to answer for your actions when Walker returns!"

As Bryce started to turn away, Graham barked "Wait! Give me your gun and credentials, you certainly won't be an agent again after this!"

When Larkin handed them over sullenly, Graham barked "Now get out!"

By the time he got to the front door, Graham had called down ahead of him, and the guards took the keys of his SL 55 off him, so he had to get a cab back to his apartment.

Larkin was two thirds of the way through the bottle of cognac when he remembered the card he had stashed away in a safe place. Fulcrum had pretty much cut him loose when he couldn't deliver the Omaha Project to them, but they did say to call them when he had something to offer. The ones he'd been sleeping with to make sure that all their mission reports had given credit where it was due (to him obviously) had told him where the next generation of the Omaha Project was based now. He was sure that he could get everything he needed to get in there from them, because the pathetic bitches would do anything for him.

Up to now, the CIA had been a better bet, because he was the rising star, the Golden Boy, but he was dead to them now, literally if Graham let Walker do what he said he would, so it was definitely time to jump ship. If he gave Fulcrum what they wanted, they'd keep him safe from the CIA, and from Casey, he thought with a shudder, Graham was right about that, he didn't know why, but that man definitely wanted to kill him.

With that, he got up and dug that card out of where he had it stashed, to call that Bernie character and make a deal. Bernie was very interested, and promised that IF Bryce could in fact deliver the Intersect, he'd get everything they'd promised before, so Bryce got to work.

It took him a few weeks, but he got all the information he needed out of the assistants, and found out by cruising the right bars who he needed to pick up to get access to this 'Intersect facility'. He slept with a few more geeks to get the hardware he needed to get the Intersect programs and shit away from there, and then went hunting. He did love a man in uniform, and he had so much fun with that boy that he almost regretted snapping his neck, almost, but he had a big pay day ahead of him and he wasn't going to let sentiment get in the way of that, even if it had been the best sex he'd had in years. Damned CIA, they'd forced him so far into the closet to keep up the expected lady killer image that he hadn't been able to have a really good time since he'd left Stanford, oh well, that'll all be over soon, he could have anything he wanted when this was done.

Initially, Bryce hadn't been able to believe how easily this was going, Mike, the one who's card he'd taken, had had an all access pass and it got him past all the checks, or at least it did until that one picky guard had noticed that he wasn't the person on the card. He'd managed to take the guard out, but not before he'd done some damage himself, and the bastard had also set off the alarm, so the job suddenly got more difficult.

He got into the room that Mike had told him had access to the servers and jammed the electronic lock to keep them out while he got what he needed. Looking at the device he was downloading this shit onto, he had to laugh, as his backup plan if he couldn't get out with the physical device was to send it to Bartowski, then get it off him later, after he'd eluded pursuit.

The transmission would hidden in one of those zork files that they'd sent to each other when they were pretending to be buddies. He doubted that Bartowski would be able to unlock it, because he'd barely remembered the correct response to the prompt, but if he did, well bye bye Bartowski, because Bernie had said that none of the test subjects for this thing had survived so far. If Bartowski couldn't open it, he'd just go in and beat the shit out of him for the hell of it, then kill him and take the Intersect program to Fulcrum to start a new life. Worst case scenario, if he didn't manage to get out and Bartowski didn't open the file, the authorities would eventually track it to him and charge him with treason, which was still a good solution in his book!

When the download finished, he put the device in his pocket and started the timer on the bomb that Fulcrum gave him to destroy the Intersect computers, then he started running for the door. The concussion wave from the bomb hit the door a second before he did and blew it out. He was a little dazed from the explosion, but recovered, picked himself up and went to make his escape, taking out any guards who got in his way.

He'd almost made it, he was in the car park for fuck's sake, when a shot hammered into his chest. He knew he was dying as he was laying there, so he struggled to get the device out of his pocket and send the transmission, hoping that Bartowski would manage to open the file so he could take him with him. He'd just hit 'Send' when a face appeared over him that made him wonder whether he was already in hell, John Fucking Casey! When he heard the device go phtttttt as it fried itself though, he laughed weakly up at him "It's too late Casey, it's gone!" Then he faded.

Casey looked down at Larkin in regret, as killing the little bastard hadn't been anywhere near as satisfying as he'd hoped it would be. He picked up the device that Larkin had been holding, it looked fried, but hopefully the techs could recover enough from it to tell them where the file had been sent to. He was sure that Chuck could recover something, but this would have to go through the normal channels first.

* * *

Arcadia - September 2007

Chuck went up to his room after dinner to get ready to go out, as he and Anna had come home tonight for his birthday dinner, and somehow he'd agreed to go clubbing with Ellie and Anna afterwards, though why doing something he hated would 'have' to be part of his birthday celebrations? He couldn't quite work that out. He decided to check for birthday emails before he hit the shower, and one of them caught his eye, Bryce Fucking Larkin? What the hell was he doing sending Chuck an email?

He checked it for malware of course, especially the attachment, but as there was no note, he opened the zork file to see what it said, after all, everyone deserved a second chance didn't they? Even Larkin? He read the prompt and automatically put in the proscribed response, and then images started flashing up on the screen.

Ellie and Anna waited downstairs for ages after they got ready, but when Ellie started to get up angrily to go and get him, Anna pointed out that it may go better if she did it, so she headed up to Chuck's room. She tapped on the door, and as she opened it (they'd seen each other naked hundreds if times, embarrassment between them over that had flown a long time ago) she was saying "Come on Chuck, you know if you try to bail on us now you'll have Cyclone Ellie storming up here to rip you a new…."

When she saw him on the floor, she ran over anxiously to check his vitals, and allowed herself a moment to collapse in relief when they were strong before she ran to the door to scream "ELLIE, GET UP HERE, SOMETHING's HAPPENED TO CHUCK!"

It seemed that Ellie and Mary were there before she finished, she always forgot how fast that family could move when they had to, and Ellie checked him over thoroughly. She couldn't find anything wrong with him, but he wasn't coming to so they decided to take him to the Castle and do a full battery of tests in the medical centre. It didn't take long for Mary and Ellie to get Chuck downstairs and into the car between them, and fifteen minutes later they had him in the medical centre, hooking him up to what appeared to be every medical monitor known to man.

They still couldn't find anything wrong with him, and the only problem he seemed to have when he DID come too, hours later, was a splitting headache, which wasn't helped by the way they were all screeching at him about how fucking stupid it had been to open an email from Bryce Fucking Larkin when he told them what he'd done.

They eventually shut up about that and he went upstairs to go to bed, and Anna went with him to keep an eye on him through the night. When Mary and Emma went home, neither of them were at all surprised when Ellie said that she was staying in the apartment (the one in the Dungeon) because she wanted to be nearby, just in case. If they could have done anything medically, they would have stayed too, but Ellie was their person for that.

* * *

Sarah finished the mission and wound up everything in Sarajevo successfully, the head count may have been a little higher than absolutely necessary but she hadn't been in the mood to take the subtle approach after that last mission. She left the others on the team to clean up the loose ends and went to arrange her ticket back to the States, but on the spur of the moment she changed her flight to San Diego. She hadn't been back since she headed off to Harvard, and she'd suddenly had an overwhelming need to see her home town.

In San Diego, she hired a Porsche as she needed something to cheer her up, and went for a trip down memory lane, but was that a bad trip. Where they'd been living when she was Sammie Burdon was a massive shopping mall now, and where they'd been living when she was Jenny Burton was a new housing estate, guess what they said was true, you can never go home?

That left her so down that she decided to try the last place that she could remember being truly happy, the Jaworskis', and she pointed the Porsche at the I-5. Halfway to Los Angeles her phone rang and she answered it on speaker. When she heard Graham's voice she almost hung up, but she wasn't quite angry enough to do something that stupid.

"Walker, where are you?"

"On my way back Sir."

"Are you in America?"

"Yes"

"Thank Christ for that, I need you to get to Los Angeles as fast as you can, Larkin stole something and sent it to someone there, it HAS to be retrieved. We don't know exactly who or where it's been sent to yet, but we should have that information by the time you get there. You need to be there by tomorrow at the latest, can you do that?"

Sarah looked up at the mile marker she was currently passing and smirked to herself.

"Yes, I think so sir."

"Good, we'll have the information sent through to you as soon as we have it, all we have so far is a name, Bartowski."

"Yes sir."

"Walker, we're depending on you!"

"Yes sir."

With that, Graham grunted and cut the call.

Sarah scowled at the phone when he was gone, but thought to herself that if she was operating over here for a few days, at least she wouldn't have to see him, so that was a plus.

By the time she reached Los Angeles, she'd received a few messages with information about the target, apparently it was a Chuck Bartowski, and he owned and operated a small tech firm in Pasadena. The last message had the address, and a note to the effect that Bartowski had been Larkin's room mate and best buddy at Stanford. Funny, while he'd talked about Stanford incessantly, Larkin had never mentioned that name? Oh well, she just had to get in in, gain his confidence and get whatever Larkin sent him, at least, if he was in cahoots with Larkin, she might get to shoot him? That could be a plus, she knew that there was a reason that the first thing she'd done was to get herself a gun.

She found the business and frowned to herself, as this looked a lot more upmarket than she'd been expecting, oh well, she ran though a few scenarios in her head and then headed for the building. It didn't take too long to find the right door, though finding any door on a building completely faced with mirror glass had been interesting. She was uncomfortable with the fact that she was going into a secure building sight unseen, but mentally shrugged, worst comes to worst, they die or I do, and pressed the button on the intercom for Piranha Security & Technology.

The woman who answered the intercom buzzed her in but when she saw her, it was obvious that she wasn't a receptionist, so she must work with Bartowski.

Sarah plastered a suitably polite smile on her face and said."Hello, I'm Sarah Walker, my company needs a piece of work done and one of our associates recommended your firm as the best people to talk to about it. I was told that I'd need to speak to Mr Bartowski?" The woman raised her eyebrow at that, so Sarah had obviously said something wrong there, but she turned her head and called out "Chuck, there's a lady here to see you!"

A very tall man with good shoulders and a mop of curly brown hair came out of one of the offices at that with his head down, engrossed in reading something as he walked, but he was saying good naturedly "Anna, we put the intercoms in for a reason, it's much more professional than just shouting across the office."

When he finished reading whatever it was he was so interested in, he looked up with a pleasant smile on his face and Sarah froze. She knew that smile, she knew those eyes "Charlie?"

He froze at that too, dropping what he had in his hand "Sammie?"

The Asian woman whipped around to stare at Sarah with a shocked expression "YOU'RE SAMMIE?"


	5. Mama?

**Xpl, I wasn't offended, merely trying to point out my process, and I didn't realise that the government there could dictate what people call their children. I wouldn't like that.**

 **This chapter is largely fluff.**

 **Usual disclosures, no rights to any characters portrayed and this isn't the real world. Nor is it a Disney Princess story.**

Pasadena - September 2007

None of them said anything for a while, they just stood there looking at each other, or rather Chuck and Anna were staring at Sarah while she was staring at Chuck, but glancing at this other woman, trying to work out how she knew her name.

Then Chuck said "Anna, call Mom!"

At that the woman nodded and ran into the office next to the one that was presumably Chuck's.

Now that he'd found his voice, Chuck asked "Where have you been? We've been looking for you but could never find you."

Sarah shook her head "I was on the road with Dad until he got arrested when I was sixteen, and then I was made an offer I couldn't refuse…."

"By the CIA."

"How do you know that?"

"We found the reports about your father's arrest a couple of months later because they'd been suppressed, just after you graduated from high school and left San Diego. The way that everything had been scrubbed screamed the CIA but we couldn't find any references to any of the names we knew of for you in their systems. Uncle Roan thought he saw you at the Farm because you reminded him of Auntie Em, but by the time he could contact us you'd disappeared again."

"At the Farm, the Seduction School instructor, that was him?"

Chuck nodded and she slumped "I just thought he was another dirty old perv hitting on me. If I'd known, no, it wouldn't have made any difference, I couldn't get out anyway."

"He was kicking himself for not just saying your name to see how you'd react, he was trying to work out the best way to bring it up when you disappeared."

Sarah shook her head, but firmed her shoulders "Yes, I've been in the CIA for the past nine years, and that's why I'm here, you're Chuck Bartowski?"

Chuck nodded

"Did you get something from Bryce Larkin recently?"

"Yeah, I got an email from him on my birthday…."

At her look of confusion, he clarified "On Chuck Bartowski's birthday, they changed it when they gave me a new identity, they did the same for Ellie. Everything fell apart after your father took you away."

Sarah shook her head again "Never mind, I need that email, it's government property."

Chuck shook his head "It's gone, I opened it to see what Larkin had sent me, because I thought that it may be some form of apology, but it destroyed itself when I opened it."

"What do you mean destroyed itself, and what was he apologising for?"

"It fried the computer, or it would have if it had been a physical computer, and no trace of the email was left afterwards. He wasn't apologising, at least I didn't see any trace of an apology, but as for why, that'd be the fact that as far as he knew he got me thrown out of university when he framed me for cheating and screwed my girlfriend."

"He slept with your girlfriend?"

"No, I said as far as he knew he did, she wasn't actually my girlfriend."

Sarah started to say "What….?" but Anna had come out of her office and barked "She was my girlfriend. When we got to Stanford, there was a lot of homophobic activity and all the guys immediately went after Jill, so Chuck agreed to pretend to be her boyfriend to try to protect her, protect us, from all of that shit." She glanced at Chuck and went on in a softer tone. "He hasn't had a real girlfriend since I met him back in middle school."

Sarah looked at her, remembering one of Larkin's stories "Jill Roberts?"

"Yeah, how did you know that?"

"He told a lot of stories in the two years we were together…." She saw Chuck freeze out of the corner of her eye and turned to him. "No! We were partners, that's all!"

When he relaxed she continued. "Anyway, he was boasting about banging her to round out his top five after her loser boyfriend got kicked out for cheating." She glanced at the woman "Sorry."

Just then they heard running from further back in the offices and Sarah grabbed her pistol from the back of the waistband of her jeans as she backed up to the wall, trying to cover the two of them and the direction the noise was coming from. When the two women burst into the office, though, she let her hand fall to her side as she said "Mama?"

Emma ran to her and she dropped the pistol as she moved to meet and embrace her. Neither of them could speak for a while, but when she could, Sarah asked "Mama, how are you here? Graham kept telling me he had you in jail!"

Emma shook her head with tears in her eyes "No baby, I was in jail for a bit over a year after I got arrested because your father didn't warn me that his con had gone bad and he'd left a trail straight home, but the family got me out and then we all started a new life, because we all had problems."

Sarah hadn't noticed how Mary and Chuck had frozen when she said 'Graham' (Emma hadn't registered that either, she was too excited that she had her baby back), but she certainly noted the tone when Mary said "Graham, Langston Graham, you work for him?" because she registered the anger as a threat and pushed her mother behind her.

Chuck took note of Sarah's stance and from that realised what a dangerous woman she was, and he suddenly put two and two together "Oh no, you're Graham's Enforcer?"

Sarah whipped her head around to look at him "How do you know that name Charlie?"

Her distraction gave Emma the opportunity to break free of her grip and step out from behind her "Because he's been hacking into the CIA's systems, along with everyone else's, for almost fifteen years, trying to find you!"

Sarah stared at her mother, and then back at Chuck, just as he made another realisation "If you're Graham's Enforcer, then Larkin must be his Golden Boy."

"Not any more he isn't, Major Casey shot him last night!"

They looked up at that to see Diane on the screen, but they had no idea how long she'd been connected.

"Would you like to tell me why you would be so stupid as to open anything you got from Bryce Larkin and why Ellie was the one who had to tell me me about it Chuck?"

"I made a mistake, alright? I was thinking that he may have been reaching out to apologise for all that shit at Stanford, and that everyone deserves a chance to do the right thing…."

He was cut off my Sarah's snort and turned a 'not you too?' look on her. She met his eye without backing down and said "Charlie, Bryce Larkin wouldn't recognise the right thing if you slapped him in the face with it, and if you could make him see it, he'd try to to do the opposite!"

The others laughed when Anna said "Yep, she knows Larkin alright!", but Chuck didn't.

As she thought that this was going in a bad direction, Diane tried to bring it back to the news of the night before "I'm sorry Chuck, John had no idea that your name was in the device that Larkin used to send the Intersect files, and he handed it in as per protocols to see what the techs could get out of it. The only techs on hand were CIA people, and Graham didn't see fit to share the information with me until just now, obviously trying to make sure that his people got there first. By the way Sammie, how DID you get there so quickly? Graham assured me that they only got the first details out of the device a couple of hours ago?"

"I was driving up from San Diego to go and see Auntie Mary's house when he called me, he did say that all they had at that time was the name Bartowski and that it was in Los Angeles, so he may have been telling you the truth about that."

Diane nodded "That does make me feel a little better, Major Casey is taking off from Andrews in an C-37 as we speak to try to get there in time to head off Graham's infamous Enforcer, Sarah Walker. I can't tell you how relieved I am that to see who you really are."

"Excuse me Ma'am, but who exactly are you? Everyone else obviously knows you and you know my name, but I don't know you."

"Oh, sorry Sammie, I'm Brigadier General Diane Beckman, United States Air Force, the NSA's co-Director of the Intersect project and Director of the Special Projects Group. I'm also known as Auntie Di to Chuck and Ellie."

She paused "I'm so sorry Emma, I never thought it would take us this long to locate her."

Chuck interjected "Well, strictly speaking, we didn't, she located us", but Emma smiled wanly as she put her arm around her daughter.

At that point, Mary said "Why don't we take this discussion downstairs, where it's more secure?"

They all nodded and Chuck said he'd see them down there when he'd gotten things sorted out.

As soon as Sarah stepped out of the lift, Ellie barrelled up to her, as she'd always regarded her as her little sister and had missed her as much as anyone.

After she'd greeted Ellie, Sarah looked around and asked "Where's Uncle Stephen Ellie?"

They all went quiet for a moment and then Ellie said "He's in Washington with his therapist, he tried something experimental on himself a couple or years after you were taken away, and they've been trying to fix it ever since."

Sarah glanced at Anna and lowered her voice. "What about her girlfriend? I got the impression that there was something off in the way they were talking about her?"

Ellie glanced at Anna as well and said "Something happened and she left after they graduated." She hesitated and then went on quietly "Sammie, no matter what it looks like with Anna, she and Chuck are friends, best friends, but nothing more than that. Chuck pretended to be Anna's boyfriend all through their teenage years to cover for her and Jill. Yes, they've shared bedrooms, bathrooms and beds hundreds of times over the last fifteen years but they're not together that way, they're just a rather unusual twist on the traditional idea of best friends."

Sarah looked at her "Why are you telling me this Ellie?"

"Because I don't know about you, but there's never been anyone but you for him, he's looked for you every day since you left. If that's not one sided, I didn't want to risk letting something that doesn't effect what he feels for you to interfere with it."

Sarah glanced at Anna again "She tried to tell me something similar upstairs when she explained why he pretended to be Jill's boyfriend at Stanford."

Ellie looked at her "Well?"

"Well what?"

"Is it one sided?"

Sarah blushed as she tried to think of how to answer "No, I've thought about him often, and there hasn't been anyone else for me either, but what I've had to do, I don't know whether we can get past that…."

"Sammie, with what we've gone through, we've all done lots of things that we don't think we can be forgiven for, Chuck as much as anyone, when the time comes, just talk about it."

At that point, Emma caught Ellie's eye to let her know that Chuck was on his way down and they went over to sit down. Over the next five or six hours, they talked, only taking breaks for drinks, Sarah to bring the rental Porsche inside and the like. There were tears aplenty, some laughter too, but the opportunities for laughter were few and far between.

Chuck was nervous when Anna told Sarah about what he'd agreed do for Jill so that she could be better prepared when Fulcrum forced her to do things, just as Sarah was nervous when she was telling them about what she did for a similar reason, and the times when she was trapped and couldn't get out of it.

Sarah was a little amused about how nervous Chuck got when Anna almost defiantly told her much the same as Ellie had, but with more detail, telling her about times they'd shared a shower or a bed and seen each other naked, stressing that Chuck had never done anything. She also told her about what he'd been the recipient of at her instigation that first night at Stanford when she'd foolishly believed that those 'men' would have left them alone if they were obviously engaged in activities with a man.

The more they talked, the more Sarah understood what Ellie was saying, none of them were innocent any more, they'd all been forced to do things they didn't want to, to protect themselves, the ones they loved, and others who couldn't protect themselves.

* * *

The talk of the paramilitary operations raised the question of where their base for that was, and the others made Chuck take Sarah downstairs to show her the armoury and everything else. Sarah walked around the armoury, having trouble believing what was in there, she'd never seen anything like this, the SAD teams she'd worked with didn't have a fraction of what was here. Her eyes also lit up when she saw the high tech urban combat range and dojo, pool and the rest, oh yeah, she could have fun down here.

As they started to go upstairs, Sarah suddenly stopped and turned to Chuck, and finding that they were pretty much face to face when she was standing one step up she leaned forward to say in a low voice in his ear. "If I end up staying around, we're going to have to talk about upgrading this piece of crap pistol I picked up in San Diego, OK?"

She laughed at the shiver that went through him when she spoke in his ear like that and threw her arms around his neck as it just felt natural. His arms had gone around her waist the same way, and they stood there, looking into each other's eyes. For all how comfortable they felt like this, the laughter was gone and she said quite seriously "I missed you Charlie, they've all been telling me how much you were looking for me, and I just want you to know that I thought about you all the time too. I never want to lose you again, any of you, but especially you and Mama."

Chuck smiled and nodded and Sarah went to give him a quick kiss, much like the ones they'd shared before they were split up as kids, but it didn't feel quite the same now. That quick kiss became a much longer one, and afterwards as they stood there, holding each other, Sarah mischievously asked "So, do I kiss as well as Anna or Jill?" Chuck groaned and tried to pull away but there was no way she was letting go, so he looked at her "You weren't bad, you didn't really put as much effort into it as the coked up models in Milan or those drunk party girls in Ibiza though."

She pulled back a little to look him in the eye, and seeing that he was perfectly serious said "Explain?"

He smiled at her. "They were operations, we had to get some answers and I had a better chance of charming it out of them than Casey did, especially as Uncle Roan said that I was his star pupil while he'd failed Casey twice when he went through Seduction School."

She wasn't looking too happy with that explanation, so he made her look at him. "Hey, they were more enthusiastic, that doesn't mean that I preferred it! I'd rather kiss you, OK? Especially now that you can kiss better."

She belted him in the shoulder "I suppose you're a bit better kisser now than you were when you were eight, too."

As they stood there, he rubbed her back and breathed in her ear "I'm so glad you're back!" She just nodded and tightened her grip.

Sarah looked at him, concerned, when Chuck suddenly stiffened, so he whispered in her ear "I just remembered, they'll all be upstairs watching this, we have the entire place wired and there are a dozen cameras in this stairwell."

That made her give a positively evil smile and lean forward to kiss her way up his jaw before taking his earlobe in her teeth, talking quietly in his ear "Do you want to put on a show for them?" When he went to look at her she bit down harder on his ear to make him stop. "I'm betting I can convince them that I've made you forget that those cameras are there, and as soon as we start undressing each other, they'll be too embarrassed to watch."

"That'd probably work with our mothers, but I'm not so sure about Ellie and I definitely doubt that Anna would be embarrassed, I think she'd enjoy the show"

"Wanna bet? I've got at least $5000 in my pocket at the moment."

He grinned at her "OK, you're on!"

The kiss she gave him then was nothing like their previous kisses, but when he came back and upped the ante, she was having trouble remembering what they were doing until he kissed down her neck and continued down, slowly undoing the buttons of her blouse as he went, 'Oh yeah, that's what we're supposed to be doing! I'm glad I wore my nice lingerie today.'

When her blouse dropped to the steps, Sarah hopped up to wrap her arms and legs around him as they continued kissing, eventually slowing down to the point that Chuck bent down gracefully to scoop up her blouse and headed up the stairs, carrying her. He set her down on the upper landing, helping her into her blouse and doing it up before they exited the stairwell.

The surprise was Chuck's when they saw the others though, because there were no knowing looks, they all looked embarrassed to varying degrees. When she had her voice back properly, Sarah said "We were wondering whether you could settle a bet for us, when did you stop watching?" Their mothers went bright red, and Ellie and Anna looked at each other before Ellie turned back and said "When Chuck started undoing your blouse."

Chuck looked at Anna, surprised "Even you?"

That got him an angry look as she said "Yes!" and Sarah gave a little laugh as she went to hug her, keeping her arm around her as she turned to Chuck "You are an incredibly enlightened man Charles Bartowski, but even you don't really understand us, you see Anna wouldn't watch because she loves you too much to intrude on that private a moment with someone you care about."

That got her a hug from Anna, as she was happy that they understood each other, especially as from the discussion they'd heard before the kissing, they'd be sharing the man they loved, each in their own way. Sarah kissed her on the cheek and grinned at Chuck, "So pay up!"

That got her a look from everyone and she smiled "Oh, that bit about the bet was literal, he just lost $5000."

They all laughed at that, and even Chuck had to grin, as he thought that $5000 was a small price to pay for having their family together and happy like this.

* * *

They got a call from Casey to say that he was on his way in soon after that, so they asked him to pick up food for seven along the way. When Casey walked in, he was asking who the seventh was, but froze when he saw Sarah. It didn't take a genius to work out that they'd crossed paths professionally, and to forestall something being said that would be hard to take back, Emma jumped in "John, I'd like you to meet my daughter, Samantha Burdon, but I believe that you may know her as Sarah Walker?"

That made him whip his head around to look at Emma "She's your Sammie? You've found her?"

Emma nodded happily, and Sarah found that she was happy about the way he put that. As the top CIA agent, she'd locked horns with 'Beckman's Pit Bull' as Graham and many in the CIA called him more than a few times over the years, so finding him as pretty much part of the family and actually sounding happy that her mother had found her, that was certainly a surprise.

While they were getting things ready, they went over the fact that Diane hadn't been able to fill him in on the fact that Sarah was there and who she was after he'd taken off, because they couldn't guarantee secure communications. Sarah filled them in on the background that she had to get there 'by tomorrow' so she could turn up in the morning as no-one would expect her to be able to engage the target at night. Casey was also theoretically getting there in the morning, so he could report that he observed Sarah engaging the target and ask the General what to do about her.

The fact that they couldn't recover the file that Larkin had sent was a problem, Chuck had backtracked it, but there wasn't a viable copy anywhere, any copies had either been set to delete themselves, or they'd somehow been opened, which had triggered the same damage as had happened to the virtual computer that Chuck had used to open it. They all knew what this meant, if Chuck had seen the images and was still functioning, that meant that he was the only viable way for them to access the Intersect database, so Graham would be trying to grab him to use him as a resource.

Casey asked whether they could claim that Chuck couldn't access the Intersect information to get Graham off their backs, but Chuck, Sarah, Ellie and Emma shook their heads (pretty much in unison, which amused Mary, Diane and Anna at least) and Ellie said "No, they'd grab him and put him through whatever procedures it took to get to the information."

Then Chuck spoke "No, we need to find some way to prove that I can be more use out in the real world, that's the only way that I'm likely to avoid a bunker, and I'm afraid that if you (looking at the screen) try to put me in a bunker, there's going to be a war."

Diane wasn't about to argue against that, she knew which side she'd be on if it came to that, and so did they. All she said was "We might want to put the call out to our friends."

The others nodded, but when Sarah went to say something, Chuck gently squeezed her hand.

* * *

Then Chuck said "I can think better when I'm doing something, I'll go get Sammie set up in the guest bedroom in my apartment and we can pick it up when we come back." The others nodded and he took her by the hand to lead her off to the elevator. She got the hint and didn't try to talk about this until he brought it up in his apartment. When he went to put her things in the guest bedroom though she raised an eyebrow "You were serious about that?"

He looked at her "I didn't want to presume anything, I didn't think we were at that stage yet?"

"I'm not saying that I'm going to have sex with you Charlie, but as Ellie and Anna have made a point of saying, you've shared a bed with women hundreds of times without doing anything, we've been apart for nearly eighteen years, I'd like us to be able to spend the night holding each other and talking maybe?"

His smile at that lit up the room and he nodded, taking her bags to his room. Once he'd put the bags down, he sat on the bed and patted the spot beside him. When she'd sat down and taken his hand he started "OK, our friends, you remember what out parents, Auntie Di and Uncle Roan were?" She gave him a 'Duh!' look and he grinned "While Auntie Em was in prison, Graham found out about the inconsistencies in my parents' story and somehow worked out that they were the Frost Queen and the Hunter. He needed my father to get his project finished but he thought my mother was a risk, so he somehow forced one of the scientists on the team to load an early version of the program that overwrote a person's personality and memories and turned him into Alexei Volkoff…."

"Graham created Alexei Volkoff?"

"Yes, anyway, he convinced my parents that the people who had sent Hartley in weren't going to extract him, and told them where the supposed extraction device was, so Mom went to Russia to deactivate the program and get Hartley back, but it was a lie, there's no way to extract the program, and he'd created a file for a CIA Assassin, Agent Frost, which was based on the stories that he'd found about Mom…."

"Auntie Mary is Agent Frost?"

"Yeah, try to keep up here!" That was said with a grin but it still got him hit.

"Anyway, she went in, couldn't turn off the program and was captured because Graham had Volkoff told that she was an assassin coming after him, but she managed to get Volkoff to confirm her identity as the Frost Queen with the First Directorate so he didn't kill her, he made her his advisor and enforcer instead. Then Graham tried again, sending him a file about us, Dad, Ellie and me, to try and convince Volkoff that she was playing him but while he still didn't kill her, that meant that she couldn't get away without him coming after us, so she was trapped there. Dad went a little crazy and tried something desperate which was frying his brain and everything was falling apart."

"A bit after that, Auntie Di and Uncle Roan managed to get Auntie Em out of Prison and she was seeing us at school and helping us, then at the end of ninety one, the Soviet Union fell and the KGB was shut down, so they lost all their support. Auntie Em convinced Mom that she had to come home, so she escaped and did that on Ellie's fourteenth birthday in February ninety two. Just after that, we all sat down with Auntie Di and Uncle Roan to work out how we could build a new life in America, and try and find you. Auntie Di created a secret intelligence group with us in it and we've all been working in that group since then."

"At the start of two thousand and two though, Auntie Di and Uncle Roan were contacted by the GRU and SVU, who'd decided that as they'd managed to survive after they were thrown to the wolves ten years before, they may be useful and therefore ordered them to take up their duties again. Anyway, we set up something so we're feeding the information we choose back through them, but they weren't the only ones in that boat, and we made arrangements with another fifteen ex-deep cover KGB operatives to work with us and do the same thing. They're all fairly important, but three of them were near the top. As well as them there's another forty five who weren't important enough to try and reactivate, well some of them are the children of the deep cover operatives, and that's the 'friends' that Auntie Di was talking about. As you saw, we've got enough weapons downstairs to arm them if we need to fight, and we know that they'll fight with us."

"Obviously, the ex KGB thing is something that Casey doesn't know about, and it would probably turn him against the family, so that's why we couldn't discuss that downstairs. I think that has you up to date now? No, Mom, Auntie Di and Uncle Roan have also been putting me, Ellie and Auntie Em through full Spetsnaz and operative training, and according to them and Casey, we're fully trained now. Oh, and we've given Anna training too, and Jill to a certain extent."

"Charlie, what happened with Jill, I can see that there's something wrong there!"

He was quiet for so long that she didn't think that he was going to answer, then he started to talk. "A family friend organised an endowment so that she could go to Stanford, but at the beginning of two thousand they called their markers in. You see, that endowment was from Fulcrum, and they told her that she'd do whatever they said or her family would pay. Anna asked me to help, because it turned out that she'd worked out just about everything about what we were doing on her own, so we organised protection for Jill. Anna was already a martial arts expert, a high level hacker and she'd showed how good an amateur spy she was, so Auntie Di offered her a job and training so that she could help protect Jill. That was why we were doing that to try and prepare Jill for what they might put her through, because Mom and Auntie Di were certain that it was only a matter of time before she was ordered to do that."

"It didn't happen anywhere near as soon as we expected, it wasn't until March in two thousand and one, about the same time that Larkin tried to frame me for cheating and get me kicked out, anyway, the family friend contacted her and told her that she had to break up with me and seduce Larkin to get him to come over to Fulcrum, so we tried to prepare her for whatever she was going to have to do and Mom coached her on getting him to use a condom…."

"Why the emphasis on condoms, did she have issues with contraceptives?"

"No….Oh, you don't know? Larkin was gay, so we were worried about Aids."

"Gay? Charlie, do you know how many women he's slept with, how many times he tried to get into my pants?"

"Yes, I have a reasonable idea, but the girls pointed it out to me the first day and I had plenty of evidence that he was gay from the amount of times he tried to get into my bed, he only started playing the hetero stud after he was recruited by the CIA. Maybe Fleming told him he had to keep it under wraps, I don't know, but anyway, we were worried about Aids so we were concentrating on the condoms."

"A bit after we graduated, yes, I graduated. I went back to the Dean with Casey as an FBI agent and evidence that I'd been framed and we convinced them that if they didn't let me finish quietly and graduate with all my entitlements, the university would be facing lawsuits and those involved in my expulsion criminal charges. Anyway, after we got back here, Jill started getting upset and then she just disappeared. About four months later Anna got a letter from Jill to explain, she hadn't wanted to worry us, but she hadn't managed to get Larkin to use a condom every time like she told us, she didn't get Aids, but she did get pregnant, so she decided to go off and have the baby and start a new life away from everyone she'd let down, as she said. We've been looking for her, even though she asked us not to, so we can try to help her, but we haven't found a trace of her. That's why Jill's a sensitive subject. It took a lot to get Anna through that, and she still needs support, there are a lot of nights that she needs to be held…."

He'd gone quiet with that last, and Sarah saw how worried he was about how she'd take it. She gave a little laugh and kissed him, saying "Idiot! I've had Ellie and Anna telling me all day about how Anna's your best friend. I can see that, I can also see how she'd need support when her partner of how long?" "Eight years" "Damn! When her partner of eight years disappears, and you, her best friend, are the one who she needs to give her that support, I'm not feeling threatened, OK? That being said, I'm rather hoping that she's OK tonight because I think that I need that treatment tonight, and maybe we can support each other?"

She came in for another kiss, and they held each other for a while, but finally Chuck reluctantly pointed out that they should go back down so they could try to get a plan together.

* * *

When they came out of the lift, Ellie and Anna looked at each other in obvious surprise. Unfortunately for them, Sarah read that look quite easily "No, we weren't having sex! What sort of girl do you think I am?"

Even Emma burst out laughing when Ellie answered "Obviously one with a lot more self control than me, you two have been pining over each other for eighteen years, we expected you to be going at it like rabbits to get rid of all that unresolved tension!"

Both Chuck and Sarah were blushing madly, and the only one who actually looked sympathetic was Casey, all the women were laughing so hard they had tears streaming down their faces. Chuck just took Sarah by the hand and led her downstairs. While the women were laughing, Casey brought the shooting range up on the big screen and grabbed himself a drink, sitting back to watch the show he knew was about to start. For at least ten years now, this had been Chuck's way of dealing with frustration, and when he was wound up like this, the scores were always impressive. For the next twenty minutes, Chuck and Sarah alternated and Casey's surprise grew, because Sarah's scores were almost as good as Chuck's, and he never thought that he'd see TWO people capable of beating him on the range, for that matter he had a sneaking suspicion that she could beat him in other arenas too, just like Chuck could.

As they wound up and put the weapons away, Casey looked up at the screen where the General's image was and they nodded to each other, yes, they had to find a way to convince Graham to go with the plan, because they needed that pair together, individually they were incredible, together they would be unbeatable.

When they came back up, still hand in hand everyone noted, Diane asked "Have you come up with a plan Chuck?"

"Not a plan as such, but an idea maybe, I'm going try to relax tonight…." At the hint of a comment, he turned his head towards the others and said "Shut up!" before turning back to the screen "Then in the morning I'll probably come down here to set up multiple news feeds and stream them concurrently so I can get as many hits as possible, then we'll go over the results to try and find one, or more, which are big enough to serve as the basis of the case to leave me out here in the world where I can be more useful."

The others were nodding, this would be the best way forward, so they agreed to re-convene in the morning and packed it in for the night. Before they could go back upstairs, Chuck and Sarah found themselves waylaid by their mothers, Ellie and Anna, and they had to assure them, apparent evidence to the contrary, that they weren't upset by the incident earlier before they had a round of hugs and kisses and went up to Chuck's apartment.

They got the chance to laugh themselves then, because Anna grabbed John's hand and said "Come on Gigantor, you can stay with me tonight." At the look of terror on John's face, she laughed and said "If you're good, I might even let you sleep in your own bed!" Chuck shot her a 'Behave!' look and she winked at him.

* * *

As Sarah had said, they talked and held each other through the night, though there was quite a bit of kissing involved, too. While it was tame compared to what the others expected them to be doing, it was a wonderful night for them. The real surprise, for Sarah at least, came in the morning though.

Anna walked into the bedroom in her sleepwear saying "Chuckles I…" and stopped short when she saw Sarah "Fuck! I'm so sorry! I clean forgot….." She shut up at that and turned to rush out, but Chuck said "Get over here stupid, and don't even think of leaving here with my coffee!" Anna came over and put the coffees she was carrying on the bedside table, then leant in to give Chuck a 'good morning' kiss that was a real eye opener.

By anyone else's standards it would have been a lovers' kiss and Sarah was starting to have second thoughts about the nature of their relationship, and the one she was trying to rekindle with Chuck, especially with how comfortable they both were with the way that Anna's boobs were hanging out of her tank top and Chuck was squeezing her arse, when they broke off and Anna leaned over Chuck (giving an excellent view of her breasts) and kissed her the same way, the only difference being that it was still Chuck's hand on Anna's arse.

Afterwards, Anna draped herself over Chuck's chest (still with his hand on her arse Sarah saw) with her chin cradled in her hand and talked as if this were the most natural thing in the world. Sarah noted that she tended to ramble, much like Charlie. "I'm so sorry Sarah, this is the way we always start the day because Chuck's usually working through the night, I bring in the coffee and we talk through what we have to get done for the day, for the business, and the family business. I must have just been running on autopilot because I forgot all about yesterday and you being here, I hope my turning up didn't take anything away from your night. Anyway, again, I'm so sorry, I'll get out of your hair. Oh wait, how do you have your coffee?"

"Black"

"Great, you can have mine then!" With that she leant in to give Sarah another quick kiss before she hopped off of Chuck and went to scamper out of the room when Chuck stopped her with "Hey, what about John?"

"Shit, I forgot about him, too!" She grinned then "I must have worn him out because as far as I know he's still asleep." She laughed as she hurried out of the room.

Sarah looked at Chuck, a little stunned and said "Well, she's one hell of a kisser, I'll say that for her, was that your usual morning kiss?"

Chuck looked at her, confused "Pretty much, why?"

"Because I'm obviously going to have to up my game to be the girlfriend!" and then she proceeded to make him forget his own name.

Their coffees were still warm at least when they finished and they snuggled up and talked as they drank them.

Sarah was going to have to call Graham and tell him she was going in to engage the target this morning, and she expected him to warn her that Casey was also moving in and tell her to make sure she got to the target ahead of him. The most logical approach was that she tell Graham after she 'engaged' him that she'd managed to talk him into taking her out so that she could manoeuvre him into telling her where the email from Larkin was, and that would also give them a bit more breathing space to come up with something to make a good enough argument to 'keep him in the world'.

* * *

They stayed where there were and cuddled for a little while longer then went to have their showers and went downstairs. It didn't take Chuck long to set up the news feeds, which included numerous military information channels, and he settled down to watch them, scribbling notes when something flashed up at him.

When John came in, he looked rather worse for wear and just for a moment they wondered whether Anna hadn't been joking when she made that 'worn him out' crack, but he dispelled that worry when Chuck asked sardonically "Rough night?"

John looked around and nodded in relief when Chuck pointed upstairs "I couldn't sleep because I was worried about what Wu was going to do to me. I know she swings the other way, but you've been her whole world and losing you to Walker, well I thought it might have made her snap or something. I've never heard her talk the way she was talking last night and there wasn't any lock on the door of the room she put me in, so I think I kept one eye open all night.

They couldn't hold it in any longer and Chuck and Sarah broke down laughing. Even though she never thought that she'd be exchanged in friendly teasing with the NSA's top enforcer, Sarah couldn't help herself "Don't worry Casey, I think you're safe from Anna, in fact she joined us in bed this morning…." collapsing into giggles again at Casey's shocked and horrified expression at the image that brought up in his mind.

Chuck let him off the hook, because he liked and admired Casey as much as Casey did him "Don't worry John, Anna hasn't changed at all, she put you up for the night because she likes you, nothing more, now I've got to get back to this, so Sam….Sarah can fill you in on the plan of attack."

Sarah gave him a kiss for getting her current name right and then led Casey off to sit down and talk over how they were going to handle the situation they'd found themselves in.

* * *

They were still doing this when Chuck suddenly jerked, looking as though he was going into a seizure. They both rushed over, but it seemed to be finished by the time they reached him, he wiped a hand over his face, looking exhausted, but smiled when Sarah anxiously asked "Charlie Honey, are you OK baby?", pulling her in for a kiss and saying "Honey AND Baby huh?"

Sarah looked confused and Casey snorted "Great, you not only make her forget her own name, you make her forget what she calls you too, it's like Ibiza all over again."

It was a difficult call as to which of them got a bigger glare from her at that point, because Sarah didn't appreciate Casey's comment at all, but what he'd said implied that there was a lot more to Ibiza than Charlie, Chuck, had told her yesterday. He WOULD be explaining that, but for now she had to make sure he was OK. "What happened? You looked like you were having a seizure!"

"Yeah, it's apparently how this thing works when it brings up a lot of information, it kicks my arse! Previously I just got small hits on things and they were easy enough to take, but this, yeah this one really hit me. The good news though is that I think we have the event we need to make this work, someone's planning on blowing up the Pacific Security League Conference tonight at a hotel here in L.A. so we just need to get enough information together to stop it."

She looked him in the eye, still concerned, but he smiled and leaned in to kiss her, saying "Sweetie, I'm OK, really!" softly. Her look didn't change at first as she ran her fingers through his hair, smoothing it back, but she obviously decided that he was telling her the truth as she nodded, gave him another kiss and then went off to report in to Graham that she'd engaged the target and talked him into a date so she could question him in a setting where she could control what was happening.

* * *

By the time she was off the phone, Chuck had a vast array of search engines running up on the screens, looking for anything and everything to do with the conference and the plot, and he asked for her phone.

Sarah handed it over with a questioning look and he explained as he led the way to the electronics lab. "This entire building is shielded, so I haven't been too worried about bugs, but your phone is bound to be loaded with bugs and trackers, so we need to work out how to deal with them before you take it out of here. We also need to work out whether the CIA has already activated them so you can get your story straight when you have a longer talk to Graham. As long they haven't been activated, I can insert things into the system to show that you flew in late last night and stayed at a hotel somewhere, which fits with what you've told Graham, let's just hope that he was too shaken and focused on covering his arse yesterday to order them to be turned on."

She smiled at that and kissed him "I knew there was a reason to keep you around, I hadn't considered any of that! From the times I talked to him yesterday, and even just now, I think we may be OK though, he's still running scared that this will blow up because ultimately, he's responsible for Larkin."

Chuck grinned "Let's hope!"

When he pulled her phone apart and tested all the (many) add-ons inside, he quickly confirmed that most of them hadn't been activated as yet, so he checked what the one active one did and held (it was a bug that looked like it was always on, set to record any and all phone conversations, but there wasn't anything in the recording that could cause a problem for Sarah). Then he jumped onto the computer and inserted the records to show that she'd been in New York when Graham called her and had gotten onto a flight to Los Angeles a couple of hours later, booking into a hotel when she arrived (for that, he changed the hotel records of a room where the occupant had booked out early to get a room that had been used the night before). He also got into the systems of the rental company to alter the records to show that she'd rented the Porsche at their office over near the hotel (part of the reason to choose that hotel) early that morning, instead of in San Diego the day before.

* * *

Sarah shook her head at how thorough he was, and they went to see what the search engines had come up with. Chuck identified where the job to blow up the conference was advertised on the Russian Business Network, noting that it was actually targeting NATO General Leland Stanfield, and picked up who'd taken the job, a well known Serbian bomb maker. He got a number more flashes of information as he saw these facts, including the schedule of when General Stanfield would be on stage and some of the plans for the bomb, so they knew where and when to be there and had an idea of who and what to look for and Chuck inserted the details into the system to ensure that they had a specific table reserved for their dinner reservation, one where they could see both the service and main entrance for San Francisco room where the conference was.

With the plans laid, Sarah went off to get settled into 'her' hotel room (telling the ones at reception that she'd lost her key when she went out to get a car and collect her bags from the airport when they finally found them) and do what she'd be expected to do for the day. Chuck and Anna had to put in the time to look after their business clients, as many of them were being hit with the 'Irene Demova' Virus when guys were accessing the site from their work computers.

* * *

Downtown Los Angeles - September 2007

As they entered the hotel to go to the restaurant, they saw Casey at the bar and ignored him. They actually had a good time at dinner, having the expected discussions for the now active bugs in Sarah's phone, though the way Sarah's eyes were flashing at the cracks Casey was making over their earwigs, knowing that they couldn't respond because of the bugs, said that they were going to be having a serious discussion, probably involving blood and bruises, when it was safe to do so.

Chuck didn't see the Serbian bomber entering the Conference, and as the time that the bomb was supposed to be set off drew closer, Casey told them that it was time to move in. They paid up and left the restaurant, then Casey approached them and came out with a few atrocious lines that Chuck wouldn't be letting him forget about for a LONG time, quoting Robocop, really? Anyway, that gave Chuck the opportunity to go into his own lines "Wait, that guy, the one who went in there, he's a bomber, oh my god he's going to blow up the General!" and with that he pulled free of Casey and ran into the San Francisco room.

When they were inside and Casey and Sarah got the security people to back down by flashing their NSA and CIA credentials while Chuck searched for the bomber, trying to ignore Casey's comments over the earwig about how bad his lines were. "You can talk? 'dead or alive, you're coming with me'? Never mind, shut up, we've got to find this guy!"

Just at that moment he spotted the bomber and Casey indicated him to the security people, but as they were closing in on him he reached for something in his jacket and they blew him away. Chuck had to ignore that as he looked for the bomb, and spotted the covered food cart that the bomber had left standing there.

When they got to the food cart and opened the top, Chuck knew what the bomber had been reaching for, as the timer was running and was under thirty seconds, looking inside the covers underneath didn't improve anything, as there were enough explosives there to possibly bring down the building, but the bomb wasn't made to the plans that Chick had seen in the Intersect and none of them recognised anything in the wiring that would let them disarm it. Just then Chuck realised that the laptop that was being used for the arming mechanism was a cheap one that they'd been seeing a lot of that day, because the design made them particularly susceptible to the Demova virus.

He jumped onto the keyboard, enabling the WiFi, connecting to the hotel's network and bringing up a browser to search for the malware site. Time was running out as he entered the site, and the virus fried the laptop and killed the detonator mechanism with less than a second to spare. He went to snap at Casey when he made a crack about puking on the C4, but held it as he could see that Casey was just as shaken as he was, they all were, because Sarah had come into his arms as the laptop died and was still clinging onto him. They all knew how close they'd been to being blown to smithereens, far better than anyone else in there did.

* * *

When he saw General Stanfield coming, Chuck grabbed his phone and activated the bug jammers, as they couldn't afford to let the CIA hear what was about to be said. "Major, Commander, what's going on here?" Sarah felt Chuck draw himself up and went to step away but stopped when he grabbed her hand, obviously there was a reason he didn't want her to step away, but she stopped thinking about that when Chuck started speaking.

"General, I was on a date with my girlfriend at the restaurant here when I recognised a Serbian bomber entering the room and was pretty sure that he wasn't going into a security conference for fun, so I called John. I knew he wouldn't be far away because he thinks I can't even go on a date without getting into trouble."

Casey cut in with "Do you blame me? Did you miss the massive bomb we're standing next to?"

At that the General said "Massive bomb?" and Casey pulled aside the cloth covering the body of the cart to show that it was packed with explosives "Shit! Why didn't you tell me? Johnson!"

When the head of security ran up, the General told him to get that cart out of here! When the man went to grab it he stopped him with "Carefully!" so he gingerly took the handle and pushed the cart from the room. With that, the General turned back to Chuck and he continued.

"We got into the room and I identified the bomber, but the security people shot him and then we found out that he'd armed the bomb, so we had to disarm it, and that's where we are."

"You've prevented a catastrophe here today Commander, and I'll make sure that the proper authorities know about it!"

"Actually General, I'm afraid that we can't afford to let you do that, while we're here on a date, I'm actually in the middle of an operation, so I can't afford my real identity getting out, so I'm here as my cover ID, a civilian by the name of Charles Bartowski. And by the way, we also need to cover up the fact that Sarah is my girlfriend because she's a CIA agent who's in L.A. on an operation herself, and it's not an officially sanctioned relationship."

"Shit, you do live a complicated life, don't you Commander? OK, I won't do anything publicly, but I will be having some private talks with your superiors about this, you'll be getting recognition for what you did, deal with it!"

Chuck nodded with a smile, saying "Thank you sir"

The General nodded and went to leave, but stopped and looked at Sarah, "I should have known that you had someone incredible hidden away, the way you've shot down every woman who's ever come after you. I hope you realise how special this man of your's is young lady!"

Sarah smiled at him 'Oh, I do Sir, thank you."

With that, he left with a smile and Chuck turned the bug jammers off as they headed out of the conference room. When they'd left the Hotel, Sarah and Casey put on a good show of arguing over who was going to get custody of Chuck and how he was to be handled, and within half an hour Sarah had been contacted by Graham to tell her that she and Casey would be staying in L.A. to guard Chuck and act as his handlers.

To keep up appearances, Chuck headed off to the beach and Sarah 'tracked him down' there, having a conversation that the CIA expected to hear before she took him home and headed off to her hotel room to try and get a bit of rest before she went into the FBI office in the morning with Casey for the first briefing on this gig.

 **A/N:** **To the anonymous coward** **who wrote this '** **:I'm sorry to say I've given up reading your stories due to your insistence on turning sarah into a w** **hore** **in every single one of them.** **'**

 **That's all in YOUR mind** **sicko** **! Sarah has NEVER been** **portrayed as** **a** **nything like a** **whore in any of my stories,** **in fact** **I've made it clear that** **she'** **s** **avoid** **ed** **sex** **more than other women** **where she could** **. S** **he's a good person trying to handle what she's forced to deal with** **as best she can** **.** **So** **i** **f you're seeing** **whores** **, that's** **all** **your** **own** **sick little** **thoughts** **and I expect you see the same in every woman.** **Except maybe nuns, or are even nuns safe from your self-righteous wrath?**


	6. Howdy Comrade

**JR and Xpl, thanks.**

 **Nancy, thanks, on Charade, I must admit that I was going to can it and leave as I was angry with what was going on on the site, but I don't believe that the story is done yet, probably why I haven't marked it as 'complete' yet. I'll see about picking it up again when I've thought about it.**

 **NB: Made a minor change in Mama where the shadow group are only the ones who were reactivated, but they've kept contact with a few times that many.**

 **Still fluffy.**

 **Usual disclaimers, no rights to any characters portrayed, this isn't the real world and nor is it a Disney Princess story.**

Pasadena - September 2007

As soon as Sarah had left, Chuck got to work, as he had to finish getting things set up before the morning. The only details of their cover lives that he'd touched on so far was that he'd offered Sarah a job at PS&T and quietly told her that officially, Anna would be sharing his apartment with him and Casey would be taking over Anna's apartment. He had until morning to create everything else. He also had an even bigger job, finishing a bullet proof business case to convince everyone that the human intersect team had to be operated under very strict parameters if they wanted him, as the human intersect, to keep working.

* * *

By the time that Diane came on-line at about 3AM his time, he had most of it done, the records showed that the smaller building beside El Castillo had been sold to Shadow Security and they'd had the development application to alter the building approved by the planning department while they were going through settlement. All the records were in place to show that Shadow Security was a legitimate company, made up of a franchise of an established security services company based in Austin Texas that had merged with a smaller but well regarded security company in L.A. that they'd taken over. The owner of the L.A. company, Gertrude Verbanski, would be running Shadow Security as the L.A. operation of the parent company. The story line was that the owners of the parent company were proud patriots and had agreed not only to take John Casey on as the second on charge for the L.A. operation, but also to allow the government to add whatever they wanted to the premises while the building was being rebuilt.

The personnel list that Chuck had put together for Shadow Security made Diane shake her head, it was made up of people from the core shadow group, who'd been supposedly been brought in from other franchises of the parent company, this was Gertrude, Marco and Ilsa, along with Yuri Gabrienko, Louis Chekov, Sydney Prince, Robin Cunnings and Alexandra Forrest. As well as that, Gertrude was bringing over the people from her security company (who were also part of their 'friends') to make up the rest of it, Javier Cruz, Vincent Smith, Richard Noble, Robert Simms, Michael Colt, Zoe Alleyne, Victoria Dunwoody and Sofia Stepanova. All of Gertrude's people were ex-military, with experience in corporate and celebrity security, and the Shadow group had all been highly respected operatives, so the Shadow Security team made for a formidable force, especially with Casey added to it.

Part of the work that Chuck had had to do was to ensure that all of the ones from the shadow group (and most of the ones from Gertrude's company) had records that would stand up to investigation by the CIA, and the NSA for that matter. He was still doing that when Diane came on-line and they started discussing it. He filled her in on what he'd told Sarah and cleared with Anna, that Sarah would bring up the fact that he'd offered her a job with his company and Anna would be listed as sharing his apartment. This was both to make it more believable for them to be living in a place like El Castillo, and so that the 'NSA' could lease Anna's apartment for Casey to use, the records now showed that it had just become vacant after the previous tenant moved east. He also pointed out the fact that he'd altered the records to replace his and Anna's names in regard to the other companies with other identities that he'd created and embedded in all the necessary systems.

* * *

That was the easy part, the hard part was finishing putting together the in-depth history of Chuck Bartowski, basket case, and making it bulletproof. This included counsellor and psychiatrist reports, statements from colleagues and customers, a mountain of evidence to show that Chuck Bartowski would be a basket case who was good for nothing but a rubber room if he ever had to experience betrayal or abandonment again. They had a few things in their favour here, like the fact that he hadn't had anything to do with any woman other than family members and his lesbian best friend since he finished at Stanford, except for that one date he went on with Agent Sarah Walker. As General Stanfield had commented, he didn't even talk to women most of the time. Then they had the fact that over ninety percent of their business dealings with customers or anyone else were actually handled by Anna, Jeff or Skip, mainly Anna, because Chuck was usually working away behind the scenes.

Put together with the reports and statements that he'd created and salted throughout the systems, they showed the image of a brilliant but exceedingly fragile young man who'd been destroyed when he was betrayed by his best friend and long term girlfriend at university. His business was apparently only functioning because his best friend was running it for him, and he was incapable of having social interactions. This all made the fact that he'd actually had a date with agent Walker all the more amazing.

The NSA's favoured psychiatrist, Dr Leo Dreyfus, had formally reviewed all the reports about Mr Bartowski and stated that in his professional opinion, any further indication of betrayal or abandonment could finish what the betrayal that he'd experienced at Stanford had started and would render him an irrevocable basket case. He further opined that Mr Bartowski had probably only opened up to Agent Walker because she was almost the total opposite of the woman who'd come so close to destroying him.

They'd also manoeuvred the DNI into establishing the formal position that America NEEDED the Intersect database, and if the only copy of this database was in the head of a rather fragile young man, then NOTHING could be allowed to threaten the emotional stability of that young man.

When they finished going through the final touches of what he'd put together, Diane laughed. "Have you ever considered going into politics Chuck? You've got the DNI and the President almost ready to order anyone who MIGHT do something to disturb your delicate equilibrium banished, and they're on the verge of begging Sarah to marry you, just to get you to be happy and stable. I've expressed my concerns that the CIA may not be willing to handle this in the manner that we believe necessary to keep you working properly and they're pushing to have that executive order to have Sarah transferred to my control, along with the rest of it, done."

Chuck grinned at that "I would be willing to make the sacrifice of marrying Agent Walker for the good of the country General."

"I just bet you would! Chuck, we're not out of the woods yet, but with the groundwork you've done I believe that we can get Sarah locked into this and protected from that bastard Graham's plans for her. I hope you're as proud of yourself as I am of you!"

"I'll celebrate when she's safe Auntie Di. We can't underestimate Graham."

"I know Honey, but we've got a really good case now, thanks to you!"

* * *

With that, he sent everything that she'd need for the morning through to her and told her that he'd make sure that all the rest of the records would hold up before he went to bed. He put another hour in before he crawled into bed, and Anna let him sleep in until 8 because she knew the sort of hours he would have been putting in the night before. She had looked up what he'd put together though, so after she'd given him his coffee, she hit him "Are you kidding me? Did you specifically go out, looking for tall bitches? Gertie's the shortest of the lot of them, way to look out for my self esteem issues Chuck!"

He shrugged "Hey, you can blame Gertie for Zoe, Vicky and Sofia, I just brought her people across with her, for the others, I had to go with the ones in the shadow group who were available and had the skill sets we needed to fit into the company we were creating. If it makes you feel any better, think of how Casey's going to be when he sees Louie, Mike and Yuri."

That got a grin from her. "Oh yeah, he won't like that, damn they're big!"

"I'd say Yuri's more tall than big but yeah, Mike and Louie certainly have the big title down."

"Uhuh, anyway, time to get up, you need to get some work done before your girl comes back and distracts you again."

He swatted her on the behind for that and she leant in to kiss him with a laugh, then turned serious "I'm so glad you found her Chuck! I have to admit, I thought you'd be searching for her for the rest of your life and die lonely, and you don't deserve that, you're the best man there is. I was never been more glad to be wrong in my life!"

He hugged her, quietly saying after a bit "I've wondered about that quite a bit myself over the last eighteen years, I can tell you."

She wrapped her arms around him and said "Well you don't have to wonder about that any more, you've got her back, now we just have to sort out the American government and stop them from interfering with us, no problem!" With that, she kissed him again and headed out the door.

* * *

Downtown Los Angeles - September 2007

Sarah met Casey outside the FBI's L.A. office, her earwig already in place so the others could talk to her while she was in there. For the benefit of the CIA's bugs, Casey asked "Did you tuck Bartowski in all snug last night Walker?"

"I made sure that the asset was delivered safely into his apartment building, if that's what you're asking Casey!"

"No need to get snooty Walker, after you!"

She proceeded him into the building, sharing a quick smile when they knew that they were out of range of the cameras.

Once they were in the secure teleconference room, the link to D.C. was initiated and they went over the events of the night before. Diane didn't bother trying to cover up her look of triumph when Graham buckled and formally (if reluctantly) agreed that it would be in everyone's best interests for Charles Bartowski to remain 'in the world', with the Walker and Casey as his handlers, though he made a point of eagerly stressing that Walker's cover was to be Bartowski's girlfriend.

When they started discussing the arrangements of the assignment, Sarah brought up the fact that Chuck had offered her a job in his company and that was quickly locked in as no-one could argue with that being a good thing. Graham was rather suspicious when Diane said that they'd already managed to secure the newly vacant apartment next to Mr Bartowski's for Casey, and also that they'd placed him as the second in charge of the security company being established next door, and furthermore that that the owners of that security company had given the government carte-blanche to change or add what they wanted while they were rebuilding the property, so they were working on plans to add an operations centre underneath the building for the team.

When she baited the hook with in a dig about there being room for Sarah in the apartment that they'd acquired for Major Casey if required, Graham bit, just as she'd planned. "That won't be necessary General, we'll be setting up Agent Walker at Maison23 on a short term basis, but her orders are to rapidly progress her relationship with the asset with the aim of her moving in with him at the earliest possible opportunity, I expect that to happen within a month, two at the absolute most, as this operation needs to be brought under control as soon as possible."

Diane could see Sarah getting upset about such a blatant order to screw Chuck into submission as fast as possible, but then saw her calm down when Casey said something to her. She looked at Graham "Have you reviewed Mr Bartowski's file Director?"

"I've skimmed it, what of it?"

She reached forward and picked up a very thick folder from the front of the desk, dropping it onto the desk in from of him. Graham's eyes went wide, as the CIA's file on Bartowski wasn't anywhere near this size.

"The reports are that Mr Bartowski experienced a traumatic incident while he was at Stanford, one that involved your Agent Larkin and his long term partner, Jill Roberts, to be specific. Your Agent Larkin framed him for cheating and actually managed to get him expelled, until Mr Bartowski's family had that overturned with the FBI's assistance at least, it was reportedly the damages settlement from that incident which gave him the money to start his business. On top of that, your Agent Larkin then had sex with Miss Roberts and proceeded to make sure that everyone in Palo Alto and any forums he was on knew about it. Mr Bartowski fell apart and required considerable psychiatric help before he was able to become functional again."

"He is still a semi-recluse. His friend Anna Wu effectively runs his company for him and helps keep him on an even keel. He has not had anything to do with any woman other than those in his immediate family or Miss Wu, who is a lesbian by the way, since he was betrayed and abandoned by Miss Roberts."

"Our agency psychiatrists have reviewed the reports of the psychiatrists he was seeing over the past six years, and have have expressed concern that any further incidents could well effect Mr Bartowski's ability to function as the Human Intersect."

"We were all amazed that Agent Walker could manage to get past his defences enough for him to not only agree to have a date with her, but by all accounts enjoy it up until the point where he saw that bomber. The fact is, no other woman has managed anything close to that with him in six years, but Agent Walker jumping into bed with him straight away would almost certainly remind him of Miss Roberts and destroy what trust he apparently has in her, and that in turn could possibly effect his ability to function as the human intersect. We cannot allow you to endanger this operation in that way Director."

"The only way that this would be allowed to progress would be if Agent Walker were to engage in something more akin to a real courtship with Mr Bartowski, to allow trust and affection to develop between them at a more natural pace. And while we're on the subject, in view of Mr Bartowski's previous betrayals, if Agent Walker were to go down that path, there could never be any circumstances, on mission or off, where Agent Walker was engaged in any activities that Mr Bartowski would be expected to regard as a betrayal of his trust in her. Would you be willing to commit to that Agent Walker?"

"What do you mean Ma'am? I don't really know what you're asking?"

"No missions involving any form of seduction, unless it's minor and we, or more to the point you, have agreed it with Mr Bartowski previously, or any dating or engaging in activities of a compromising nature in any location where you may be seen or recorded so it could get back to him."

"That is rather restrictive, and I must say intrusive into my private life Ma'am."

"Yes, I am aware of that and am sorry Agent Walker, but our reviews of Mr Bartowski's records have led us to the believe that any further betrayals would push him into a state when we could well lose access to the Intersect permanently. Therefore, I will ask again, would you be willing to commit to the conditions we've discussed?"

Sarah pretended to consider for a moment. "Under those circumstances, yes Ma'am, I would."

Graham growled "You can choose what you do in your personal life Walker, but on missions you will follow your orders. And furthermore, General, you do not have the authority to dictate to the CIA what missions we give our agents!"

"Perhaps not Director, but I have been authorised to enforce the operating conditions for the Human Intersect project, given Mr Bartowski's history and mental state. Without formal commitment to the conditions stated, Agent Walker and hence the CIA will not be part of the Human Intersect project."

Graham sneered "Under who's authority, General?"

The screen suddenly split and the DNI appeared on one side. "Mine, Director! I have been monitoring this discussion as I had concerns about what way it would go. It appears that those concerns were valid. So it's me asking now Director, will the CIA formally commit to complying with these requirements, or not?"

Graham gritted his teeth "Yes sir, but we'll have to replace Agent Walker with another agent, we cannot afford to lose our best agent to a project of this nature."

"That is not an acceptable option Director, as General Beckman has stated, the experts have been astounded that Mr Bartowski has extended himself as far as he has for Agent Walker. From their reports, he would almost certainly regard it as yet another betrayal if Agent Walker were to suddenly disappear and someone else was pushed on him to take her place. Therefore, the conditions on this are that Agent Walker will be permanently, irrevocably and exclusively assigned to the Human Intersect Project. She will only operate within the Human Intersect team and not perform any other missions outside of the Human Intersect team, either solo or with any other agents. She will not complete any functions relating to seduction unless both she and the Human Intersect have agreed prior to the mission. She will also not be involved in missions where she is required to act in a compromising manner with other agents. General Beckman will have final authority on all orders issued to Agent Walker. If the CIA agree to these conditions the paperwork will be prepared for your, my and General Beckman's signatures and we can continue."

"That is too restrictive sir, we cannot lose the services of our best agent like that. Under those conditions, the CIA will opt out of any involvement in this Human Intersect project, we will continue to look for our own suitable candidate and proceed with them when we locate one."

"Is that your final word Director?"

"Yes sir."

"Very well Director, remain there in General Beckman's office, as there is other paperwork that must be processed."

* * *

Washington - September 2007

Graham was certain that he'd just been manouvered into something, and that was confirmed by the fact that Beckman was obviously trying to hide a smile. When he saw Walker go from looking upset to relieved when Casey said something to her, he knew that they were up to something and barked. "Walker, we're leaving, I expect you to be on the next plane to Langley!"

As he said that, the door to the office opened and the DNI walked in to hear the end of Graham's order. "Director Graham, are you disobeying the order I gave you?"

"No sir, I was just giving my agent her orders."

The DNI looked at the screen "Agent Walker, stay right there!"

Sarah nodded without saying a word.

Then he turned back to Graham. "It is my belief, Director, that you were in the process of wilfully disobeying an order that I had given you, but I will deal with that another time." He put some documents on the desk in front of Graham. "I require you to sign these to accept receipt, and then action it as ordered."

When Graham scanned the document, his face hardened. Looking up he said "I decline sir, I will not give up my best agent!"

The DNI turned grim "What gives you the impression that you have any choice in the matter Director? That ship sailed the second you said that that was your final word. Now, sign to accept receipt of your orders or I'll have the General sign on the next page to say that she witnessed you refusing to sign to accept receipt! In case you've forgotten, refusing to accept a direct order from the Commander in Chief can be construed as treason under some circumstances."

He suddenly stopped and faced the screen "Agent Walker, I've just realised that we owe you an apology, we've been treating you as something to be traded about instead of an extraordinary young person who's already done and sacrificed so much for your country. This document (waving at what was on the desk in front of Graham) is an order signed by the President, and if it is executed, you will be part of the CIA in name only, you will be subject to no orders from the Director, or anyone else in the CIA, only General Beckman, as the Director of the Human Intersect Project, and she in turn will be subject only to orders from myself as the DNI, and the President. A similar order will be presented to the Director of the NSA for Major Casey, and a slightly different one for General Beckman. Under the terms of this order, you will only operate as part of the Human Intersect team under the terms that we were discussing and you cannot be made to perform any mission, by yourself or with other agents, outside of the team. Your assignment to the Human Intersect project will also be permanent unless you request to return to the CIA, another option is that you may resign at any time you wish. I apologise for not treating you with the respect that you have earned, and deserve, prior to this. My only excuse is that we were on an extremely tight schedule to get this done, but I am now formally asking whether you wish to transfer to the Human Intersect Project under these terms, or you would prefer to stay in the CIA in your current capacity?"

Sarah's eyes were shining but she kept her expression neutral as she drew herself up "I choose to transfer to the Human Intersect Project sir, and I thank you for offering me this choice."

The DNI nodded with a smile, saying "It was no more than what you have earned Agent Walker!"

He then transferred his attention to Casey "Major Casey, we have also shown you the disrespect of proceeding down this path without asking whether it is what you wish, so I ask you the same question, do you wish to transfer into the Human Intersect Project under the terms discussed, or do you choose to stay with the NSA in your current capacity? Your orders are slightly different in that the other project that you are currently assigned to is also coming under the same umbrella."

Casey also drew himself up "I choose to transfer to the Human Intersect Project sir, thank you."

The DNI nodded and then turned back to Graham. "Are you prepared to sign the document Director, or must I have General Beckman sign it as I have said?"

Graham grabbed a pen and angrily signed the three copies of the document before throwing it down, whereupon the DNI calmly picked up the pen and signed the documents as well, passing them to Diane in turn for her signature. He then picked up one copy of the document and extended it to Graham, saying. "This is your copy Director, now as this is a meeting for the Human Intersect Project, there is no need for you to remain. You will be formally advised, along with the other agencies, of what the parameters for engaging the Human Intersect team will be."

The document wasn't quite snatched from him and Graham gritted out "Sir. General." before he stalked out of the office, not quite slamming the door.

* * *

The DNI relaxed with a small smile and said "I must admit that I enjoyed that a little, he likes to throw his weight around too much for my liking." He turned to look at the screen "Agents, I think that it's only fair to fill you in on what we're planning for the Human Intersect team."

He glanced at Diane and she nodded for him to continue. "As well as yourselves, we are planning on adding representatives of the DEA and the FBI, though we have no Agents in mind as yet." He stopped when Sarah suddenly brightened at that "Do you have any suggestions on that front Agent Walker?"

Sarah hesitated and glanced at Casey "I know and trust two excellent agents in the DEA and the FBI sir, but Major Casey may not be comfortable working with one of them…."

Casey gave her a suspicious look as the DNI asked "Who are these agents, Agent Walker?"

"Carina Miller of the DEA and Zondra Rizzo of the FBI sir, I was working with both of them for two years as part of a successful multi agency team."

They heard Casey mutter something like 'Oh hell no!' while Diane snorted. The DNI raised an eyebrow at her and she quietly said "Prague, sir."

The DNI tried, with little success, to stifle a grin as he then remembered the infamous picture of the Major, handcuffed naked to a bed, that had been doing the rounds of the intelligence communities for a while.

He schooled his expression and asked "Would you have any objections to working with either if these agents Major?"

Casey gritted out "No sir."

The DNI nodded and looked at Diane "General, do you believe that these agents would be suitable for your team?"

Diane nodded "Yes sir, the team that Agent Walker was part of was very successful. They were unfortunately sabotaged by the second CIA agent on the team, who was in fact a traitor. After she was killed in a trap that she was attempting to set for the others, the team was arbitrarily disbanded, even though many people in the intelligence community had argued for it to be allowed to continue."

The DNI nodded "Perhaps you should approach these agents with Agent Walker to determine whether they would be interested in joining the Intersect team then."

With that, he nodded to Diane and the screen, saying "I will leave you to make the necessary arrangements."

After a round of 'Thank you sir's, he picked up his copy of the order and departed.

* * *

Diane looked at the screen "John, can you work with Carina? I happen to agree with Sarah, they are both very good agents, and we aren't likely to find anyone else of their calibre who we'd be able to trust the same way."

"Yes Ma'am, as long as we can keep her away from any handcuffs."

Sarah piped up at that point "Her story was that you said some unkind things that hurt her feelings, and that was why she left you like that. And there's always the fact that you had to already be in that bed, naked, to be handcuffed that way."

"Alright, it wasn't all her fault, but she didn't have to send that damned picture to everyone!"

"In her defence, my understanding is that she didn't, she sent it to a few friends, like me, and somehow it went, what do they call it, viral?"

Diane tried to get it back under control "John, I'd like a serious answer, are you able to put that behind you and work with Carina Miller?"

"Yes Ma'am."

She nodded "Sarah, do you think that you can set it up for us to sit down and talk to them?"

Sarah nodded "Yes Ma'am."

Diane went on "OK, even though we have a controlled group now…."

She stopped when Sarah suddenly held her hand out with a panicked look, and dug out and held up her bugged CIA phone.

Diane's lips thinned angrily but she nodded, she'd forgotten all about that! Once she had control of herself she went on.

"I'm sorry Agents, I've just been reminded that I'm due in another meeting, we went over the time allocated for this meeting due to those issues. We will have to pick this up again in our next meeting, I'll leave you to make the arrangements as we've agreed, goodbye."

She cut the link and sat down, only just resisting the urge to pick something up and throw it across the room.

* * *

Pasadena - September 2007

In the FBI office, Casey held his hand out for the phone and Sarah handed it over as they headed out of the room. In the lift foyer he started talking "Stop bitching Walker, you know how damned slow these lifts are, it'll be quicker to take the stairs" as he pushed the door to the stairwell open. As he got to the top of the stairs he said "Walker, look out, your phone!" and then dropped it down the centre of the void in the stairwell. When it hit the floor at the bottom, it shattered quite spectacularly and they grinned at each other, even though it took them a while to pick up even the major pieces. They weren't too worried if they missed some pieces, once they'd confirmed that they had the SIM, and that any batteries had been separated from the rest.

Back at the Castle, Sarah held up the FBI evidence bag that held remains of her phone and said "My phone had a ackident!" with a grin and Anna burst out laughing. "That looks like John's work!" That made Sarah look at him and ask "Do this often, do you?" but he just shrugged "It's the quickest way to deal with something like that!"

Chuck came out of his office as he said that and laughed, taking Sarah's hand to lead her to the elevator. Casey went with them as he wanted answers about what had been set up, and he knew that Chuck would have been behind it.

After getting Sarah's choice of the phone she wanted, Chuck confirmed that the SIM was a legitimate one (IE: Not interfered with by the CIA) and put it into the new phone, along with the micro-SD card, then started transferring her contacts over. As he did this, he told them about what he'd been doing to build the case to show what a fragile flower he was, and how another betrayal would most probably render the human intersect permanently inoperable.

When Sarah asked when he'd had the time to do all this he just shrugged, saying that he did it between jobs and at night.

Sarah noticed how he tap danced around Casey's questions about this new security company, describing the people as 'off the books agents', but it was fairly obvious from the name who they were, or most of them anyway. He disagreed when Casey argued that they didn't need the separate bunker for this, pointing out that they would most likely be required to work with other agents at times, so they'd need an official 'Human Intersect' base that people could see and access. Reaching over to bring up the building plans on screen, he added that Casey's role would be officially set up to handle any walk in business and therefore there would be a small reception area dedicated to his office, and the access to the base below would be via his office.

Chuck pointed out that, for the time being at least, they'd have to go with the accommodation arrangements that had been described, adding with a hopeful look "With one possible exception?" Sarah smiled and nodded at that, leaning across the bench to kiss him. The way he smiled when Casey said that they may have a lead on the DEA and FBI agents to join the group pretty much told them that that had been his intention when he set up the whole thing, though Sarah would be asking him later how he knew about them.

While they talked, he went through the CIA add-ons in the remains of Sarah's phone, finding that luckily the bugs hadn't been sending things out real-time or recording timestamps, so he was able to delete all the recordings from just after Graham left, until just before Casey and Sarah went into the stairwell. He also deleted all of Sarah's private contacts and any records of private communications. When the phone had been scrubbed of anything that they didn't want the CIA to have, Sarah boxed it up and sent it back to Langley with a note to say that it had fallen out of her bag as they were going down the stairs in the FBI building, as would be supported by the final recording and the story they gave when they asked for an evidence bag to put the remains into.

When they sat down to talk through things properly, they had to concede that the argument that Auntie Di had used against Graham meant that they'd have to have separate accommodation arranged for Sarah, but while they were talking about what they needed to get organised for her she suddenly smiled. "Actually, the General made an offer about that and I think I'll take her up on it, I will be sharing with Major Casey!"

Chuck grinned at that but Casey looked displeased "Oh I won't ACTUALLY be staying with you Casey, not most of the time anyway, that will only be officially listed as my residence! And who'd be crazy enough to try and get in there to check whether I'm living there or not?" That was enough to get a smile from him, thinking about the fun he'd have if anyone tried.

Now that she had a clean and secure phone, Sarah called Carina and Zondra and asked whether they were in the States? Zondra was, but Carina wasn't getting back for a few days, so she made arrangements for the three of them to meet for dinner in D.C. the night that Carina got back. She sent a note to the General to get her to clear her calendar for that night.

After that, they went upstairs to set her up as an employee of Piranha Security & Technology while Casey went off to meet Gertrude. The family laughed when they thought of how the two of them would work out, because John and Gertrude struck them as a match made in a particularly scary part of heaven.

With Casey gone, Chuck quietly asked whether Sarah was OK with Anna sharing the apartment with them, particularly the fact that she still needed to come in and be comforted at times about Jill, and maybe the morning coffee visits. Sarah made him look her in the eye when she said yes to each point to make sure that he understood she meant it.

They called Auntie Di and told her what the living arrangements would be so she could make them a matter of official record. Chuck had already sent the plans for the Shadow Security premises through, and Auntie Di told them when the government contractors would be coming, so that Gertrude and Casey could ensure that they were there to meet them and agree the requirements. Chuck called that through to Casey straight away, while Sarah went to get her things from the hotel and check out.

The next couple of days were largely spent with Sarah and Casey getting settled into the Castle and their cover jobs, Sarah working with Chuck and Anna (and their staff) and Casey working with Gertrude and her security team. Neither Sarah or Chuck were looking forward to the next day, because it would be at least a day and a half that they'd be apart when she went back east so that she and the General could meet with Carina and Zondra. That was why they jumped at the idea when Auntie Di suggested that Chuck and Casey come along.

Though they'd locked the Human Intersect operation down pretty well, the overall Intersect team still wanted to do tests on Chuck, to hopefully improve the operation of the human Intersect program, and it would only be logical for his two handlers to come with him for that. The fact that this would also cover up the core reason for Sarah to be in D.C. was just another bonus, as was the fact that Marco, Robin and Alex would be flying back to L.A. with them (and providing additional security when they were in D.C. as well).

This meant that they left L.A. first thing in the morning and then drove straight to Fort Meade from Andrews AFB. Chuck had to endure about four hours of testing at Fort Meade and then they drove straight back to Washington to get there in time for dinner.

* * *

Washington - September 2007

Carina and Zondra took one look at Sarah's skirt suit when she arrived and knew that this wasn't an 'I missed you, let's party!' visit, so she was greeted with. "What are you up to Blondie?"

"What, no 'Sarah, where have you been, we've missed you!' ?"

"Yeah, all of that, now tell us why you're dressed like that and why you arrived with Casey and that other guy!"

Sarah laughed "I love you too Zondra! I've missed this, well like a hole in the head, but I HAVE missed the two of you!"

Carina leant in to kiss her on the cheek, whispering in her ear "What about tall, dark and gruesome and the leggy bitches over there? Are they with you or after you?"

Her reaction when Sarah's lips met hers was utter shock, as that had always been something that made Sarah uncomfortable before, but Sarah shrugged, murmuring "Sorry, someone's lesbian best friend was part of the package deal I took with the new gig and some things are changing, in answer to your question, they're with us, part of our backup singers."

"OK, who are you and what have you done with Sarah Walker? I think I might keep you though, you're way more fun."

Sarah smiled mysteriously but sat up and looked a little more serious "So, are your worlds still screwing drug lords and chasing nickel and dime gang bangers?"

They looked at her until Carina growled disgustedly "You know they are, what's your point?"

"Do you want to change that?"

That got their attention. "What are you saying?"

"Just what I said, do you want to get away from what you're doing now, or not?"

Carina and Zondra looked at each other and Zondra said "You know we do! What games are you playing Blondie?"

"No games, if you want out of your current lives, my new boss wants to talk to you."

They just looked at her as she stood up "Well, come on! Do you want to talk to her or not?"

They scrambled to their feet and followed her to the private room that Casey and Chuck had gone into.

The two women noted the way the three at the table in the back followed their every movement as they crossed the restaurant. When they reached the room, Sarah knocked once and went straight in, closing the door behind them. There were three people in the room, only one of whom they knew, John Casey.

The younger man who'd come in with Sarah and Casey was sitting at the table, and Carina in particular noted the look that passed between him and Sarah as she entered, smirking to herself at the thought that she could have some fun here.

The last person in the room, therefore, had to be the mysterious 'boss'. On the face of it, she didn't look that impressive, a small redheaded woman in her fifties, but that being said, if she commanded the best of the CIA AND the best of the NSA, she had to be powerful.

She launched straight into it "Agent Miller, Agent Rizzo, nice of you to join us, please, have a seat."

Carina saw a chance to push Blondie's buttons and started to head for the chair beside the admittedly cute young guy, but the anxious pleading tone she heard in Sarah's voice as she whispered, apparently to herself, "Oh Red, no!" stopped her. She'd never heard her like that before and it confused her, so she took another chair and tried to get her mind off that and pay attention to the proceedings.

When everyone was seated, the woman started speaking. "Thank you for coming ladies, we'll try to make this quick so that you can catch up with Agent Walker, though hopefully you'll have plenty of chances to do that after you join us. I am Brigadier General Diane Beckman, and as you will have by now guessed, Agent Walker, Major Casey and Mr Bartowski work for me. We've recently created a new multi agency group, and we would like to invite you to join us."

Carina and Zondra exchanged a look "What can you tell us about this group General?"

"Not a great deal until after you've joined I'm afraid, because just about everything to do with it is way above your current security clearance. We currently have high level CIA and NSA agents (waving at Sarah and Casey) working with a top level information specialist (waving at Chuck), and we're planning to add high level DEA and FBI agents as well, we'd like them to be the two of you."

She exchanged a look with Sarah and continued "One thing I can promise you is that you will never be requested to sleep with someone for a mission, or risk getting yourself killed going after some drugged up gang banger who will be forgotten and replaced before the body's been taken away. We'll be dealing with serious targets and I plan for us to make a difference."

The two women shared a look again and Carina spoke up "That sounds like a wonderful opportunity General, and I certainly hope that Agent Rizzo can take you up on your offer, but unfortunately I don't see the DEA releasing me, because I've proven too useful to them."

The General looked at her sympathetically "Do you WANT to join us Carina?"

"Didn't I make that clear? Sorry, YES I would love to join you General."

The woman smiled at that, and looking down, picked up a document and extended it to her "Well I don't really think that anyone will be able to stop you then."

Zondra leaned forward to try and see what Carina had read that had shocked her so badly, but the General offered her the other document. When she'd looked at the document in her hands, she looked up with the same expression as Carina "Is this real?"

Sarah answered her with a grin. "Yes Z, you should have seen Graham's face when the DNI forced him to accept mine."

Zondra turned to her, stunned, but did a double take when she saw that she was openly holding that guy's hand. She shook that off and said "Just to be clear here Blondie, we're talking about the Director of National Intelligence of the United States, right?"

Sarah grinned "Yep!"

Zondra looked back at the General "Well General, in that case it looks like you have your DEA and FBI agents, so when do we get to find out about Lover Boy here?"

The General looked confused until she saw their joined hands and frowned, saying "Chuck!" disapprovingly, but Sarah beamed and said "Most of it will have to wait for your clearance Z, but the unclassified part is, this is Charlie!"

Both women's heads whipped around at that "Charlie, your Charlie, the one you've been moping about since you were a kid?"

Sarah nodded happily and they shook their heads in wonder.

Carina glanced towards the door "What about the backup singers then, can you tell us about them General?"

"Backup singers?"

Sarah said "Marco and the girls."

"Oh. Yes. They will be part of the security company that is Major Casey's cover job, and may be your's as well. They will also form the support team for the core team that you'll be part of. The personnel are essentially off the books as far as any agency is concerned."

The General looked at her existing team and at their nods turned back to the two women. "This will be a permanent assignment unless you choose to go back to your agencies, you may also resign at any time you like. You won't be under the control of your agencies, you will only accept orders from me, and in turn I only report to the DNI and the President. You will be based in Los Angeles with the rest of the team. For the record, do you, Agent Miller, and you, Agent Rizzo, choose to join our team?"

When they both nodded and said "Yes, Ma'am!" she nodded and said "Good, when you go home tonight, pack whatever you'll be taking with you." She handed over some paperwork. "Fill out and sign these tonight, and we'll have our people arrange for the agency removalists to ship the rest of your belongings to you in California."

"The team will be out at Fort Mead for most of the morning, if not more, tomorrow, and I will work on getting your transfers, clearances and the rest processed in the same time frame. You will be notified when you'll be picked up to fly back to Los Angeles with myself, the team and the, backup singers. Are there any further questions ladies?" When they shook their heads she went on. "Well in that case I'll see you at Andrews tomorrow, enjoy your night." She collected the President's orders and the rest of her paperwork and Casey escorted her out to hand her over to her protective detail.

* * *

When she'd left, the two women turned to Sarah "What the fuck? Blondie, what the hell's going on here?"

She grinned "You've just joined the most unusual team you'll ever see!"

Zondra jumped in because Carina looked a little dazed "What…." She stopped in frustration as she realised that most of what she wanted to know would have to wait until her clearance had been upgraded, but as Sarah had already said there was one thing she could talk about, so she said "For a start, explain THIS!" as she waved at the two of them.

Sarah beamed again (OK, that was going to get old real quick!) "I was sent to California to recover something that Larkin had stolen and sent to a supposed accomplice…."

Carina broke in "Yeah, sorry about that Sarah, I know that the two of you were together for a long time…."

Sarah cut her off "Why? Casey did me a favour when he shot that bastard!" They whipped their heads around to stare at Casey, who'd just walked back in, at that "He was incompetent and he spent two years constantly trying to get into my pants even though…."

She stopped and looked at Chuck before she turned to Carina "Red, you're the expert on all things sexual, did you ever get a gay vibe from Larkin?"

Carina frowned as she thought about it "Are you kidding? The Golden Boy, gay? Come on, he screwed more women than….." She was running every encounter she'd ever had with Bryce Larkin through her head, as she had a photographic memory, and the brainless bimbo was just as much an act as the fact that she enjoyed being a sexbot. "No, you're right, he was very convincing, but it was always the cute guys who caught his eye, not the women."

She saw the 'told ya!' look on Chuck's face and her eyes's widened, oh no, she finally gets him back and he's gay? But what about? Sarah read the looks crossing over her face "Oh fuck no! Larkin was Chuck's room mate at Stanford, so he had Larkin trying to come on to him, and Chuck's best friend had called it when she met him." That last made Carina send her a questioning look and she nodded, figures, her dream guy's best friend is a lesbian, curiouser and curiouser cried Alice.

With that out of the way, Sarah continued "So I get to Los Angeles and engage the target, the woman who let me in calls for him and he comes out, totally engrossed in reading something as he's walking and then he looks up and it's Charlie! We're rambling on for a while, trying to catch up on the last eighteen years when I hear people running. I presumed that he'd been trying to keep me occupied until reinforcements arrived and got ready to fight it out, then Mama ran in!"

"But, I thought you said that Graham kept her locked up to keep you under control?"

She nodded "That was what the bastard always told me, but he never had her, she was in prison for about a year because my father had basically set her up to be arrested but, some friends, got her out. So that's where we are, we've set up this new group in Los Angeles and you'll be working with us now."

Carina and Zondra were shaking their heads, but Carina turned to Chuck "So Chuckie, are you going to give Blondie the night off so we can catch up with our girl?"

Her response came from Sarah "Carina, no, we've only been together for less than a week, I promise we can go clubbing like old times, but not tonight, please?"

That had them staring at her again, Zondra found her voice first "All of this has happened in less than a week? How the fuck did THAT happen?"

Sarah looked at Chuck and Casey before turning back to her. "That's part of what you're not cleared to hear yet, but this group and what we'll be doing, well it's important."

They nodded at that, they'd already seen and heard enough to confirm that, at least.

They decided to put business aside for the night, because there was too much that they couldn't talk about, so they called for food and drinks and spent the time catching up. At one point, Carina was drunk and morose and tried to clear the air with Casey. "Johnny, about that picture, it wasn't me who sent it to everyone, I don't even know who it was."

Zondra grinned at that "Why didn't you ask? I do! It was the bimbo, she was pissed because she figured that she'd rocked his world in the back room at that party, but he just kissed her and went back to the party, and then he went home with YOU. She was crowing about how she'd shown him, because she sent it to everyone after you sent it to us." She looked at Casey "Sorry Casey, but I was pissed at you at the time for what you said to Red."

Carina looked at him hesitantly "Are we good Johnny?" He smiled as he pulled her into his arms and kissed her "Of course we are!"

Zondra looked on, mostly relieved for Carina but also feeling a little left out. Sarah picked that up and chuckled evilly "Do you think Z would be Anna's type Charlie?"

Carina spluttered into her drink at that, but Zondra hadn't heard when Sarah told her about the lesbian best friend, so she looked a little confused. She worked it out soon enough to give Sarah a 'You'll be paying for that bitch!' look though, which just got a grin from her.

* * *

When they were kicked out of the restaurant at closing time, they made sure Carina and Zondra got home in one piece and then headed back to their hotel, getting up early to head to Fort Mead for more testing.

They pulled the plug on the testing at 1400, as the scientists would have continued forever if they had their way, letting the General know at that point so that she could make arrangements for the flight, and for her and her detail, as well as Carina and Zondra, to get to Ronald Reagan Airport. Chuck also called Marco to let him know that he, Robin and Alex had to get to Ronald Reagan, then they left Fort Meade to drive back.

The presence of the General's protective detail and the Air Force stewards kept any discussion to innocuous subjects on the flight, and Auntie Di had to fight to avoid laughing out loud at Chuck's exaggerated eye rolling when they exited the C-37 to see the row of oh so inconspicuous black SUVs waiting for them.

Her protective detail objected when they were told to park themselves in the lounge in the Piranha offices while the General went off somewhere else with the people she was calling 'her team', but they were reminded why she got the name 'Old Ironpants' when she dressed them down and then stalked off.

When they came out of the elevator in the Dungeon and saw the operations centre, Carina and Zondra's 'What the fuck?'s tumbled out as one.

Zondra shook her head as she looked at Carina and said "I don't think we're in Kansas any more Toto!" and matched Carina's grin when she replied "Who are you calling a dog, bitch?"


	7. Of Shoes--and Ships--and Sealing-Wax

**They're coming clean about who they are in this chapter, so I went back to correct the Polish name issues that Xpl raised in Chapter 1.**

 **Usual disclaimers for the land of litigation, no rights to any characters portrayed and this isn't the real world or a Disney Princess Story.**

Pasadena - September 2007

While they were blown away by B1, Carina and Zondra reacted to B2 the way the rest of the operatives did, running from one thing to the next as if it was their own version of Disneyland.

Unfortunately, they asked the question that Casey never had, why were most of markings on the weapons and equipment still in Cyrillic? The argument that they'd obtained the weapons etc via the connections that Mary had made in the time when she was trapped in Alexei Volkoff's world was accepted, as that made sense, but the idea that a fairly large and diverse group of Americans could all read Cyrillic well enough that there was no need to relabel everything? That didn't fly anywhere near as well. The way that they accepted the explanations given said that they'd be demanding a real answer.

Chuck caught Casey's expression as this was going on and realised that the fact that he'd held off asking that question didn't mean that he hadn't been thinking it, and that didn't bode well for them. He could also see the other questions that Carina and Zondra didn't know enough to ask yet going through his head, like just how had this group of extraordinary people come together? A couple coming together, that's life, but a group this big? That had to be planned.

Chuck knew that he had to talk this over with Sarah, Mom, Auntie Em and Auntie Di, because this was something that they were going to have to address, sooner rather than later, and if it didn't go well when they did? Well that was something he didn't want to think about.

That was too much to deal with that night though, so after they'd shown Carina and Zondra around the Dungeon, they were taken up to their apartment. They'd done up an apartment for the two women on Level 3, if they didn't want to stay there they could find places of their own, but at least they had somewhere to live while they did so.

* * *

Pasadena - October 2007

With all the political wrangling that had been required to get the team set up as an independent body and the agendas of the ones who'd been closed out of the project, they were under pressure to be seen to be producing results. So just after Carina and Zondra joined the team, Sarah and Casey were in Casey's apartment, looking at a screen that was split to show Diane, and Langston Graham. Graham made no attempt to cover up the fact that he was angry about losing any control over the project, or Sarah, and was demanding that they come up results on this, or else.

All they had to go on was the fact that there was a trail of suspicious deaths across Europe and the middle east that was apparently leading to Los Angeles, and the fact that foreign intelligence agencies, in particular the British SIS, were apparently quite interested in it. It wasn't hard to see why Graham would be pushing something like this, because it would take a miracle for them to come out of it looking good. They wound up the video-conference with Diane saying that she was sending through everything they had.

They swore when they saw just how little Graham had provided them to work with, but printed out the images and called for Chuck to come up and look at them. Chuck was drawing a blank and getting frustrated, when his gaze fell on the paper sitting on the coffee table. At that moment he was very grateful to Casey for being the dinosaur that he loved to rag him about (for holding onto the old ways), because it was the paper's front page article about an art auction that night that triggered the flash of information that tied this together and brought up the other information that they needed.

"Ah. Guys? Does the name La Ciudad mean anything to you?"

Both Sarah and Casey had been involved in assignments that had had some connection to the elusive arms dealer known as La Ciudad, so he certainly had their attention with that. They sat down and recorded what he'd come up with, then Chuck moved out of range of the camera while they they initiated another video-conference with Diane and Graham (or rather, they contacted her and she linked Graham in) to discuss what Chuck had come up with.

Graham insisted that Chuck go to the auction to identify La Ciudad, and while she agreed in principle with Sarah that the danger to Chuck wasn't worth it, Diane knew far better than her just how capable he was at looking after himself and others and the fact remained that no-one else was likely to be able to identify La-Ciudad, so she made a show of reluctantly agreeing to the need for him to be there. Once they'd laid the plans for the operation and disconnected the links, Chuck came forward to discuss what they were going to do. The time frame was too tight to get many people into the auction, all they could manage was Chuck and Sarah as guests and Casey as a bartender, though they'd have Carina, Zondra and the rest of the Shadow Security team on-site to provide backup. It also meant that they didn't have time to create proper identities so Chuck opted to use his Navy identity, Charles Carmichael, as it shouldn't be known outside of the U.S. military, while Sarah went with one of her old mainstays, Rebecca Franco.

It was no surprise when the 'assistance' that Graham had offered turned out to be rather less than helpful, in that the dress that they had delivered to the Piranha offices for Sarah was a flaming hot red number that would make her the centre of attention. It fitted her like a glove, but it was NOT the understated elegant gown that they'd agreed she needed for an event like this. At first she was going to throw it away and try to find something to wear, but she stopped herself "No, you know what? I'm going to wear this, and we're going to rub it in that bastard's face that we succeeded despite his best efforts!" Chuck grinned and kissed her, murmuring "As you wish." in her ear.

* * *

Downtown Los Angeles - October 2007

The rest of them were in place by the time that they pulled up at the event in the stretch town car, but things went awry before they even entered the event, as some klutz bumped into Chuck on the steps leading up to it and smeared a canapé on his shirt. Chuck went to try and do something about it in the mens' room, but while he was in there, seeing the man washing his hands beside him in the mirror triggered a flash of a number of images related to those he'd seen for La Ciudad. The man noticed the look he gave him as a result of that flash and made a snarky comment, so Chuck gave some platitudes and left hurriedly to get to Sarah to tell her that the next man coming out of the mens' room had something to do with what they were there for.

She swore when she realised that she was going to have to get some information out of him, and the others listening in grinned at her words, and worried tone, as she said "I'm going to have to work him a little to get any information out of him, are you OK with that baby?" They also smiled and nodded at Chuck's response "Yes, of course, just be safe!" with the sound of a kiss.

Unfortunately, the man had been looking for Chuck when he came out and he saw him with the stunning blonde in that red dress, so when she went to work him, she ended up with a pistol pressed into her side as she was escorted from the room. Casey stopped Chuck from going after them, pointing out that he couldn't be seen doing anything, and that he needed to stay here and try to spot La Ciudad. As he left, Chuck grabbed his arm and bit out "Get her back safe!" Casey nodded and took off, a little disturbed by the threatened mayhem clear in Chuck's tone if he let anything happen to her.

Chuck downed the drink Casey had made him and started to circulate, as he'd drive himself mad with worry if he stood at the bar thinking about what may be happening to Sarah. He soon found himself in front of the picture which had been prominent in the flashes he'd had that morning, but it had a different frame, which in turn prompted other flashes which showed the many small containers of plutonium that had been hidden in the other frame.

At that point he was interrupted by hearing "Beautiful painting, no?" He turned to smile at the Latin beauty, Malena, who'd spoken, making small talk until the music of the tango started. Malena looked so wistful as she said that she LOVED to tango that Chuck decided that he could look around the room as he danced, and it might get his mind off what he was hearing over the earwig, so he led her onto the dance floor. She was a good dancer, but he was a little uncomfortable with the way she was rubbing up against him as if she had plans for afterwards, and when he dipped her at the end, her hair fell away from her neck, exposing a scar that triggered enough information flashes to confirm that he actually had La Ciudad in his arms.

* * *

Meanwhile, up on the roof, Sarah was being held captive by three men, having been all too thoroughly searched by one of them while another held her. The man who Chuck had seen was demanding to know who she was when Casey burst through the door, identified himself as a Federal agent and told them to surrender. They obviously liked their odds of three against one and tried to argue that they had authority here as British Intelligence until Casey said "Now!" and all three of them were lit up with the indicators of multiple laser sights.

At that, they quickly put their pistols down and let Sarah go. Sarah turned to the one who'd 'searched' her and kicked him in the family jewels, following that with a pile driver punch that pounded him into the roof surface, out cold, because the bastard had gone way too far in checking inside her bra and up her dress. Then she turned to the one in charge, the man Chuck had seen, and kicked him too, because he'd just watched, smirking, without doing a thing to stop the man. She picked up her weapons that they'd taken off her, along with all of their weapons and credentials and handed their stuff over to Carina (who was masked and in full tactical gear).

The British agents tried to demand their return, so she rounded on them "You were operating on U.S. soil without authorisation from our government, you've interfered with a United States intelligence operation, and you manhandled a U.S. government intelligence operative without cause. We'll be hanging onto your weapons, but we'll be returning your credentials to your embassy along with a formal complaint to your government." The one in charge stepped forward, saying "But we had…." when he was cut off by a burst from a suppressed assault rifle cutting across the roof in front of his feet, followed by the laser dot climbing his body to stop on his chest. The threat offered was clear and he shut up, with that Sarah and Casey ran back to the auction.

* * *

Things hadn't been going too well there, either, because Chuck tried to engage Malena in small talk to keep her occupied until the others got back, but one of Larkin's buddies from Stanford had come up, drunk and calling out at him "Chuck Bartowski!" "What are you doing here Bartowski? Didn't you get the message when Jill dumped your arse and ran to Bryce as soon as you got caught cheating? You have no place in our world you loser!" Chuck shut him up with a nerve pinch that left him in too much pain to talk but the damage was already done, he caught the signal she gave so it was no surprise when he felt a pistol being pressed into his back.

While he was sure that he could get out of this with little risk of injury, there was no chance of doing so in public without exposing himself for what he was, so when she suggested that they take this to her room he went along with it. On the way up to Malena's room, another problem occurred to him, because he couldn't be seen in action by La Ciudad or her men either, as he'd be exposed as soon as they went into custody, Shit!

La Ciudad was having fun taunting Chuck while he kept up the frightened civilian act, saying that he'd been putting on an act to try an impress his date, but she'd latched onto some rich guy as soon as she caught him out. When she decided that he didn't have anything else to tell her, she started slowly screwing a suppressor onto a pistol and he was thinking that he'd have to expose himself, but a thumping outside the door caught her and her guards' attention.

They called out to the guard outside the door, and when he didn't answer, they started bringing their pistols up so Chuck hissed "Get down!" into his mic, calling "Guards at two and three o'clock from the door!" as they started firing and he kicked the chair he was tied to over. He'd broken the chair apart and freed himself within fifteen to twenty seconds, and he surged up to knock out La Ciudad with a blow to the base of the skull. By that time they'd taken out the guards in the room using his targeting information so he called them to cease fire, going to let them in when they did so.

They came up with a story about a shootout between some drug dealers and the DEA and FBI strike team who came in to take them down (using the Shadow Security team to pose as them, of course). Diane organised cleaners to come in and make everything look the way it had, and arranged for a C-37 to get to Bob Hope Airport ASAP with a trusted FBI team to take custody of the prisoner from the 'FBI' strike team who delivered her to the airport. One of the 'FBI' agents also handed over an envelope with British SIS agents' credentials.

* * *

Pasadena - October 2007

By the time the prisoner and contraband was handed off, Sarah and Casey were in a video-conference with Diane and Graham. Graham was looking a little smug as he pointed out that their team had almost lost their human intersect, so Sarah went to town, pointing out that they wouldn't have been separated from him if it wasn't for the foreign operatives who had taken her away at gunpoint and who had for some reason been insisting that they had authority to operate on U.S. soil, and in fact that this was their operation and the U.S. intelligence agents should stand down.

Graham went quiet at that, which they all noted and Diane asked whether he knew anything about their claims? He hesitated as he tried to think of a way out of this, but he couldn't, so he said "Well the head of the British SIS and I have had a gentleman's agreement for some time to allow each other's agents to operate on their soil."

Diane musingly said "I would have thought that for it to be a gentlemen's agreement, it would have required gentlemen?" She waved that aside when Graham went to react "Never mind, is the Director of National Intelligence or anyone else aware of this 'gentlemen's agreement' Director? And has the DNI signed off on it?"

"No, it was made before that role was created."

"And you didn't feel it necessary to advise your superior of agreements that you've made with a foreign power about operations on U.S. soil?"

"It slipped my mind."

"What about this claim of their's that this was a British SIS operation and the U.S. had no authority to intercede, was that something that slipped your mind too?"

"We never discussed it coming onto U.S. soil, but we agreed that the SIS would follow it through."

"You seem to have omitted that from the briefing that you have us Director, in fact you specifically informed us that you had no idea of what was involved here, that information would have been quite relevant to my team in handling this matter."

Graham tried to stare her down "That information had no direct relevance to the operation at hand!"

Diane shrugged "We'll see what the DNI's opinion on that is Director. The evidence I have here is saying that you attempted to set my team up for failure, and through withholding relevant information you put at least two members of my team's lives at risk, this is not acceptable!"

Sarah interjected here "Ma'am?" She waited for Diane's acknowledgement before proceeding "We took the SIS Agents' credentials from them and have sent them back along with La Ciudad . We informed them that we'd be returning them to the British embassy with a formal complaint from our government. I must admit that I injured two of them slightly because of the way I was handled by them."

Diane's eyes narrowed "Explain, Agent Walker!"

"While I was being held and searched, the search was not restricted to looking for weapons. My underwear hasn't gone through the wash yet, and if required we should be able to get a full set of fingerprints of at least one of them off it, as he handled it enough."

Diane looked ready to blow "Please document that incident fully Agent Walker, and yes, there WILL be a formal complaint made to the British government about everything done by their operatives on U.S. soil, I will see to that!" At that she cut the link before anyone could say anything else.

Ten minutes later, Sarah got a call from Graham, no doubt trying to threaten her into changing her story, but she ignored the call.

* * *

Langley - October 2007

Back in Langley, Graham was furious, everything had gone to shit, starting from when he suspended Larkin really. Obviously he had no idea how much Larkin had compromised his staff, because it had to have been one of them who told him about the new Intersect facility. Then Larkin sends the Intersect to Bartowski, who could actually use it! It was fairly obvious now who actually got that ninety eight percent result in the Subliminal Imaging tests at Stanford. It got only worse after that because that pint sized bitch Beckman had somehow played him, and apparently the DNI, to not only get sole control of the human intersect project but to get it taken outside of all the normal chains of command. On top of that, she'd also used that to take his best agent off of him! He knew from discussions with the Administrator of the DEA and the Director of the FBI that they'd lost two of their best, too, though the Director of the FBI didn't realise just what he'd lost as yet, because he'd ensured that Rizzo had been automatically demoted and restricted to low importance operations after he'd disbanded the CAT Squad, citing their failure to recognise the threat. His plan had been for her to be sidelined until he was ready to use her, Miller too, but having the DEA use her to soften up drug lords keeping her malleable worked too.

That was what rankled the most, that that bitch Beckman almost had what he'd dreamed of for the Omaha project, to have the Human Intersect teamed up with the rest of the U.S. Intelligence communities' best agents to form the ultimate team. The only thing the bitch was missing was the fact that the Intersect was supposed to be an agent, but her's was a civilian, and a mewling mommy's boy to boot, so she'd never achieve what that team was supposed to achieve.

This current business though, that just added to his problems. It was supposed to be easy, give them just enough clues so that they'd look ridiculous when the Brits came in and solved it right under their noses. That would have given him and his supporters cause to argue that a civilian intersect was obviously a failure and start the ball rolling to get the project disbanded, and hopefully get Walker back where she was supposed to be. But that idiot Bartowski had to fluke it and come up with enough intel to move it forward. He'd thought that he'd still had a chance though, get him in there to have La Ciudad kill him like everyone else who'd seen him and they'd have pretty much the same result. Yeah, they'd have to do without the Intersect Database until they'd rebuilt the computers, but America had survived for hundreds of years without the Intersect, a few more months wouldn't hurt that much.

Of course, them having a run in with the Brit agents and the stupid Brits opening their big mouths wasn't good, especially when they were all so incensed about Walker getting handled like that, that wasn't going to go at all well, he was going to have to do some fast talking to get out of that. The cherry on top of the big steaming turd was the fact that they had somehow managed to capture La Ciudad, so Beckman would come out of this looking damned good, while he was going to get his arse kicked. And Walker refused to answer when he tried to call her to talk sense into her. Shit!

* * *

Pasadena - October 2007

When Chuck heard about what happened to Sarah, he wanted to go after the Brits, but she talked him out of it, eventually. That wasn't their biggest problem though, because the run in with them had left Casey muttering to himself about foreign intelligence operatives, which in turn had him stewing over the Russian language question that he'd recently been reminded of, and he kept working himself up about that.

A few days later, as Mary was walking past him, he barked something at her in Russian about who did she work for? Mary turned to look at him for about a minute, then answered in flawless Russian, sounding like a true native _'You know it is really insulting that everyone presumes that if you worked for the KGB, you must be Russian! I was born a Pole John Casey, and don't you forget it! In answer to your question, I work for my adopted country, where my son was born and we've made a new life for ourselves, the United States of America!'_

She stopped for a moment then continued in English "You want answers? Fine! Come along!"

In the meeting room she told him to "Sit!" and called the others down, then started a secure link to Diane. When the link came up, Diane took in who was in the room and looked at Mary for an explanation. "John Casey is demanding to know who we work for Diane, I think it's time to tell him, and these other two as well." Diane nodded and looked back at the others. "The short answer is that we work for the interests of our country, the United States of America, but there is a history behind this that you should know." She switched to Russian _'I was born in Leningrad in nineteen fifty five as Daria Ivanovna Veselova, Dasha. I joined the_ _Committee for State Security_ _in nineteen seventy, when I was fifteen, and in nineteen seventy three, I was inserted into the United States of America by_ _the First Chief Directorate of KGB_ _as a new college student,_ _Diane Beckman_ _. I_ _went_ _through university on an_ _Air Force Reserve Officers Training Corps_ _scholarship, so that I ended up as an Air Force Officer,_ _and it was_ _arrange_ _d_ _for me to be assigned to the Air Force Intelligence unit. I w_ _orked_ _there for a couple of years before I transferred_ _in_ _to the National Security Agent as a First Lieutenant.'_

Casey went to say something but she stilled him with a raised hand

' _At the end of nineteen eighty, I and another deep cover operative were informed that four_ _Polish_ _deep cover operatives were being inserted into the United States. These people would have their own assignments but they would also be working with us. This group was made up of Emma Lesia Burdon,_ _a top_ _controller and information analyst_ _who would_ _have_ _oversight of their operation_ _, Jacek Henryk Burski,_ _an operative who would pose at her husband, and an actual family, Stefan Filip Bartkowski, a top computer and technology expert, Maria Elzbieta Bartkowski, a top operative, and Eleonora Klara Bartkowski, their nearly three year old daughter. The Bartkowskis were given the surname Jaworski_ _to hide their identities_ _as they were both quite famous, but Emma and her 'husband' used Burdon as Emma was not trained as an operative, and while Emma was famous within the KGB,_ _she was generally_ _only_ _known as the Fox and_ _her name wasn't known outside of the KGB.'_

' _The Burdons and Jaworskis established themselves in California and Stefan, Stephen, started doing research work for the California Institute of Technology, but he was quickly poached for a covert project for the Central Intelligence Agency. Both M_ _aria, Mary,_ _and_ _Emma_ _had babies_ _relatively_ _soon after they arrived in the United States, Karol Filip Bartkowski,_ _officially known as Charles Philip Jaworski,_ _was born in September nineteen eighty one and Samanta Lesia Burdon,_ _officially known as Samantha Lisa Burdon,_ _was born in April nineteen eighty two. The two children were raised together and became quite close. Unfortunately, Samant_ _h_ _a's father was not at all supportive of her, his family, or of his assignment and_ _Mary_ _had to threaten him to make him fulfil his obligations, he slept around and got mixed up in stupid, illegal things which led to him abandoning his salesman's job and becoming a con man.'_

She looked at Emma and Sarah and apologised for airing their dirty laundry, but they shook their heads to say that it was fine. Zondra broke in at that point to ask if the story could continue in English, as her Russian wasn't as good as everyone else's seemed to be. Diane nodded and continued in English.

"In November nineteen eighty nine, Jack made a real mess of a con and went into hiding without telling his wife what had happened, and on top of that he'd left a clear trail back to her, so the FBI and ATF descended on her home without warning and she was arrested and taken away. Jack came out of hiding, grabbed Samantha from her school and ran before Mary could get to San Diego. We were unfortunately in Berlin working in bringing the Wall down at that point and couldn't help them at all, we didn't even find out about it for over a month. The alerts about Emma's arrest by the FBI made the CIA put the Jaworskis into lock down, so Mary couldn't get away to look for Emma or Samantha. The event also made the CIA look into the Jaworskis more closely and they found out about Mary, the Frost Queen, and Stephen, the Hunter, and how they'd disappeared about ten years before. The head of the CIA project, Langston Graham, decided that while he needed Stephen to finish his project, an operative like Mary was too much of a risk to him, because she'd take Stephen and the children and run as soon as she decided that they were at risk, so he engineered something to get rid of her."

"There had been a failed project before Stephen came onto the team that overwrote the subject's personality and memories with what had been programmed into the image, it was apparently called 'Agent -X' from what Chuck managed to dig up when he hacked into the CIA's secure systems. Only one person left on the project other than Graham knew anything about this, a British scientist, Hartley Winterbottom, who had been good friends with the Jaworskis, so Graham somehow forced him to load the program and dumped him in Moscow, that was how Alexei Volkoff was created. Graham then told the Jaworskis that the CIA people who had talked Hartley into this had apparently decided that it was too dangerous to send anyone in to deactivate the program and get him out, so they were leaving him to his fate there. Graham told them where the 'deactivation device' was, which was a lie as there's apparently no way to deactivate it, so Mary grabbed it and went in with it to get their friend back."

"What she didn't know was that Graham had also taken the KGB's Frost Queen stories and used them to create a full profile for a top CIA agent, Frost, and then salted those records in the CIA's systems so that all he had to do when she went in to get Hartley out was tell Volkoff that the CIA had sent an assassin, Frost, after him and let him get the information out of the CIA's systems to convince himself that this was the truth. Mary managed to convince Volkoff of who she was and he made her his aide instead of killing her, so Graham tried again, sending Volkoff all the details about her family. That was why she was trapped there in Russia for so long, because she couldn't escape without him going after her family. Stephen got desperate then and did something stupid, he loaded an early version of the intersect into himself. He thought that it was safe because his son had loaded it and was OK, but while Chuck's brain could handle it, apparently his couldn't and it started to fry his brain."

"A few months after that, we got back from Europe and started working on getting Emma out of Prison, but it still took us nearly nine months." She stopped to look at Emma, saying "I'm sorry Emma" before continuing. "We had other problems, because even though our involvement with the KGB had been diminishing over the past few years, we'd been using them to keep in contact with Mary, so when the USSR and the KGB disappeared at the end of ninety one, we were losing all contact with her. Emma convinced her that she'd get Ellie and Chuck away, and that she needed her to help find Sammie, so that's what they did and Mary got back to them on Ellie's fourteen birthday in February of ninety two."

"We had another problem then, because while two of us still had our positions and careers and were free to work for our adopted country without any conflicts, Mary, Emma and the rest had been cast adrift with nothing. That was when we came up with the idea of creating a secret intelligence group under my control and having them, the best minds I know of in the intelligence business, working for me, so that we could get the resources we needed to look for Sammie. That was working well for about ten years until two of us were contacted by the GRU and the SVU and told we were being reactivated. We'd all made our home in our adopted country by then and had no intention of being their dogs again, but Chuck came up with idea of feeding them safe information that couldn't hurt America to keep them quiet. He also found others who were in the same boat and we banded together with them to survive, Shadow Security is made up of about a quarter of those people."

"So Major Casey, in answer to your question, we work for our country, the United States of America! Do you have any further questions?"

"Yes Ma'am, you mentioned two of you and kept referring to we, who is the other one?"

"Rodya Yakovovich Gromov, though he's been known as Roan Montgomery for over thirty years now. Roan actually 'went native' before I did, back at university in the seventies. While he got into the CIA as he was ordered to back in university, he convinced our superiors that he had no access to anything relevant to the war. In fact, we've all been largely in 'sleeper' mode, so we weren't expected to risk exposing ourselves unless we had something important to deliver. The longer we were here, the more we learned that the people here weren't the pigs that we were taught they were, and Mary and Emma were raising their families here. Promoting the war seemed to be the wrong thing for both sides, so we only sent unimportant things back and they started to forget about us. I think that was why they just wrote us all off when the KGB was disbanded."

"So, John, what are you going to do now, are you going to expose us, or work with us to try and keep America safe? You've worked with me for at least sixteen years and Mary, Emma, Ellie and Chuck for fifteen, haven't you learned who we are yet?"

"I thought so Ma'am, but I didn't know I was working with a pack of Russkies!"

A knife embedded itself in the table, just short of his finger tips "I thought we'd already cleared this up Major! Emma, Stefan, Eleonora and I were born in POLAND, not Russia, as was Jacek for that matter, Karol was born right here in Los Angeles and Samanta was born in San Diego, NONE of us are Russian, only Dasha and Rodya, and they've been here since nineteen seventy three. If you'd just get your head out of your arse for a minute you might be able to recognise that NONE of the sensitive things we've been working on in the past fifteen years have gone to the Russians, or you would have heard about it!"

Diane chuckled as she said "In case you didn't pick it up John, Mary doesn't like being called Russian, in fact she doesn't like Russia much more than you do because of what they've done to Poland. So, what is it going to be, are you with us or against us?"

He looked down at the knife in front of him and then back up with a feral grin "With, Ma'am!"

Diane shifted her attention to Carina and Zondra then "What about you, ladies? In or out?"

Carina spoke up first "In, Ma'am, Sarah's like a sister to me and I like being part of this family!"

Zondra smirked "Yes Ma'am, I'm in, what she said, and I want to be here to see it the next time Casey gets schooled by Mom."

Diane chuckled again and shifted her attention back to the original group "Are you satisfied with that?"

Emma, Ellie, Chuck and Sarah nodded and said that they were comfortable that the responses were genuine, then Mary set the AS VAL that she'd been hiding under the table down on the table top and said "Yes Diane, I'm satisfied."

The eyes on the other side of the table went wide as they realised how it would have gone if they'd answered the other way. They weren't angry as they'd all been forced to be in the position that Mary was in, for a lot flimsier reasons than protecting their family. It was a sobering thought though, all the more so because they'd already settled into the family so much that they hadn't considered it.

John looked at Mary "Why the knife, why didn't you just use that?"

"Because I believe that deep, deep down inside, you're a good man and you just needed the right motivation to get your head out of your arse to make the right decision. But DON'T call me Russian again!"

He nodded with a smile. "Yes ma'am, and thank you."

Carina was looking thoughtful and turned to Chuck "I thought that you only just got the Intersect, what was the General saying about you loading it back when you were a kid?"

"Back when I'd just turned nine, I was angry at my father for ignoring me, and when he walked off and left his workroom open I went in to see what was so important in there. There were lots of cool things in there, but what caught my eye was a stack of screens on one desk and when I went over it had a blinking 'Activate?' prompt on the middle screen, so I thought 'I'll show him!' and hit 'Enter'. The next thing I knew, my father was holding me and wailing that he'd killed his son. It didn't seem to do anything and he couldn't find anything wrong with me, so he decided that it was safe and less than a week later he loaded it into himself, you heard what happened then."

The others were shaking their heads at that, how could he have survived something as a child that destroyed just about everyone else who tried it?

* * *

While she had them there, Diane decided to bring up something else "The DNI and the President acted immediately in regards to the formal complaint that you requested Sarah, and they included copies of the reports from you and the others of everything that happened. The President received an almost immediate response from the British Prime Minister. Apparently those three agents were offered a choice of being stationed in the Falkland Islands, or resigning without benefits and they chose to resign."

"The Chief of the SIS has also been called to account for every agreement that he's ever made with any foreign organisations and threatened with penalties up to and including prison if he tries to hide anything or make any further agreements without proper authorisation. The Prime Minister asked what the President was going to do about Director Graham, and he advised him that he would be imposing similar measures on Director Graham."

"Graham's also just lost a lot of his power because everyone else will know that he's no longer able to follow through on most promises he makes, so he won't be able to get any favours from them. Needless to say, Director Graham won't not at all happy about any of this and we should expect him to try to get back at us, and Sarah is his most obvious target, so we need to be careful….."

* * *

She stopped to think for a bit and and asked the others if she could have a private word with Chuck and Sarah. When the others had left, she looked at them and said "Chuck, do you remember what we were joking about before that initial briefing?"

He was trying to think of what had been a joke in that serious discussion, and then he remembered his offer to make a 'sacrifice', he couldn't see the point though. "Yes?"

"I think that that could be the best way to keep Sarah safe."

Sarah looked from one to the other "Guys, the other person in the room is getting pissed about the fact that she's obviously the subject of the discussion but doesn't know what the hell you're talking about!"

Chuck turned to her and took her hands, immediately contrite. "Auntie Di was joking that the DNI and President were just about ready to beg you to marry me to keep me working and I responded that I'd be willing to make that sacrifice for my country."

The small smile she gave him was half a frown. "Would it be that much of a sacrifice?"

"No! The day we reach there will be one of the happiest days of my life! I just don't like the idea that we're doing it to protect you from Graham and those other bastards."

"We aren't, we're doing this because we mean the world to each other and don't want to be apart, ever again."

He looked at her in wonder, but he had a question in his eye, she smiled and nodded and his smile lit up the room. "Samanta Lesia Burdon, Sarah Lisa Walker and any other name you choose to use, would you agree to be my wife and spend the rest of our lives together, please?"

"Yes, Karol Filip Bartkowski, Charles Irving Bartowski, Charles Philip Carmichael and whatever names you choose to use, I'd love to marry you and spend the rest of our lives together!"

Diane smiled with a tear in her eye and sent a text to Mary, Emma and Ellie to go back to the meeting room. When they were back, Diane explained about what they'd discussed half jokingly, but was now looking like a viable measure to make Sarah safer, because as a married woman, she had more legal recourse against the sort of things that people like Graham and so were likely to push at her, even if they managed to shut the project down.

Diane paused and Chuck turned to Emma "Auntie Em, do I have your blessing to marry your daughter?" Emma nodded with tears in her eyes "Of course Chuck, I've been waiting for this day since you were children!"

Sarah turned to Mary with a mischievous twinkle in her eye "Aunty Mary, do I have your blessing to marry your son?" Mary laughed, but had tears in her eyes as well "What do you think? I've been waiting for the day that you officially become my daughter as well."

At that Sarah turned to Ellie "Ellie, are you OK with this?" Ellie just burst into tears "Are you kidding? I've thought of you as my sister since the day that you were born, so I've been waiting for this for all your life!" At that they were both crying in each other's arms.

Mary turned to her son "Have you forgotten something Charles? Someone else you're supposed to ask?" As Chuck went to answer, Diane put up the video of Chuck asking the question and Sarah's response. When it was done Mary laughed and said "OK, you didn't forget, but strictly speaking you should have asked Emma first."

Emma spoke up then "Oh stop it Mary, everyone's been asked and we're going to be the family we were always meant to be. Do you remember what you said the day that Chuck was born?"

Mary smiled "Yes, and they're even closer, in my mind you were going to have a boy too, but this is much better!"

After Ellie, Anna was the loudest and most excited, though Carina and Zondra were remarkably demonstrative for spies. With the matter of Graham hanging over their heads, they decided to fly up to Vegas immediately for a quick wedding, then have a proper wedding when they could fit it into their cover story.

* * *

Malibu - October 2007

As soon as they got back from the wedding in Las Vegas, they had another urgent mission pushed on them. At least they had the relevant information this time. A drug transporter, Peyman Alahi, was holding onto a fabulous diamond, the Nadan-I-Noor, for terrorists and it was intended to be used to purchase missiles, so the mission was to get the diamond off him to prevent those missile purchases. The DEA's Administrator wasn't at all impressed when he instructed that Carina was to go in and do whatever it took to seduce Alahi to get the diamond and Diane just told him "No". She further infuriated both him and Graham when they tried to threaten her with what would happen if her processes didn't get them the diamond that Alahi was holding and she just smiled at them.

While Chuck and Anna were getting into the systems to get the plans and details of the security systems, the rest of them were organising the team for the incursion. Chuck, Sarah and Carina would be the ones going in openly, with Casey on-site as their driver, while the rest of them would be waiting just off-site to come in.

Their entry into Alahi's compound was easy enough, as the pervert had a perpetual pool party going because he liked to be surrounded by women who were as unclothed as possible. While they were doing this, part of the Shadow Security team were getting access to the property via a path down to the beach so that they could be on hand quickly if things went south. Chuck, Sarah and Carina circulated until they were in a position to slip away, and then they headed for the part of the house that was the logical location for the diamond, checking that the team were in place before they did anything.

Chuck had no trouble circumventing the security system to get into the mansion, but they located the diamond in a sealed display room, and it was almost certain that the system would set off a silent alarm as soon as that room was opened. Unfortunately Chuck didn't have the time or equipment to disable the entire security system, so they were going to have to do this as a snatch and run job.

He got them into the room, but then they ran into another complication, as the intersect provided the information that part of the security system was twenty thousand volts of electricity running through the cradle holding the stone. That was quite enough to fry anyone touching the stone and they were trying to work out away around the problem when they heard a round being chambered behind them. They all kicked themselves for not paying attention, especially the girls because Chuck was concentrating on the security system.

When they turned to see the people behind them, their stomachs churned, because Alahi was standing there with two guards, and he was wearing nothing but a rather small pair of swimmers. The worst of it though wasn't the distinct lack of anything attractive about his face or form, it was the thick pelt that he had covering him from head to toe, no human could be that hairy!

Sarah and Carina dropped into their ever reliable ditzy valley girl personas as it disarmed most men while thinking that they'd get lucky. Alahi trying to be smooth as he devoured them with his eyes and saying "So you like my diamond?" played right into their hands and Sarah came back with a ditzy "Oh, yeah, it's really pretty!"

He came forward so he could touch them, confident that his guards would stop the man doing anything when he did so, saying "You're not supposed to be here" as if he were chiding a child, but she responded "Oh, I'm really sorry, but the door was unlocked, and who are you?"

He all but licked his lips as he looked at her "Pretty girls call me Peyman." Carina jumped in then "Hi Peyman, this is Sarah, I'm Carina, and this is our brother Chuckie" as she stepped up to Chuck to put her arm around him. Alahi thought he was on a sure thing and turned to dismiss his guards, just as Carina's hand came back, holding the modified Chinese Type 67 Silenced pistol (while it was still about the most effective suppressed pistol available, the Type 67 as issued had many flaws that they'd since rectified on all the ones they had in their armouries) that Chuck had had tucked into the waistband of his trousers. She took out the two guards with head shots and the valley girl was gone when she said "And this is my little friend!"

Glancing from the pistol to Chuck she grinned, saying "I like it Chuckie!" He smiled, turning to Sarah who had Alahi on his knees, twisting the hand he'd grabbed her on the arse with up behind his back. Chuck looked at her and she nodded, as he had to keep up the civilian or at least analyst act and asked. "How do we turn off the security system?"

The idiot still thought that he was in control of the situation, as he expected his guards to arrive at any minute. He was actually trying to get a better look down her dress as he smirked at her and said "You need the key card to do that and I don't have it on me, but you can search me if you like." That got his arm wrenched, which in turn resulted in a loud 'snap' and Sarah said "Oopsies" in her valley girl voice before she knocked him out to prevent his screams bringing the anyone else. They called for someone to come and collect Alahi, binding and gagging him with what they could find, while Chuck was trying to work out how to get the diamond without being electrocuted.

Eventually he spied the fire extinguisher and told Carina to grab it, and as soon as the men had taken Alahi out, she fired a burst of CO2 at the diamond, blowing it off the pedestal for Chuck to catch. He got a bit of a shock from the residual electricity, but managed to hold onto it. The problem then was that as well as the alarm that they'd expected, a door started coming down and gas was released into the room.

Chuck gave Sarah a shove that took her out of the room before the door got that far down and Carina kicked over a pedestal holding a probably priceless bust over to stop the door from coming all the way down, then showed that she must have been a tomboy as she slid under the door in a perfect little league slide. Chuck followed her, he had less room to spare as he as bigger, but he made it. Once outside, they hoofed it with their people who'd taken out the guards who'd come running at the alarm.

As they couldn't really run in heels, Chuck scooped up Sarah while one of the other guys scooped up Carina and they took off down the path to the beach where the van was waiting to whisk them away almost silently with its electric propulsion system. Back on the road, they transferred to the town car and headed back to the Castle while the others delivered Alahi and the diamond to the C-37 that Diane had waiting.

* * *

Pasadena - October 2007

Back at the Castle and reporting how the mission went, they had a good idea from Diane's smile what she was up to, considering what they'd discovered when they were researching this. When Graham and the Administrator of the DEA were linked in, Diane informed them that the diamond had been recovered, so the terrorists wouldn't get their missiles, she also informed them that Peyman Alahi had been captured and would be delivered to the DEA. The Administrator was looking rather pleased with the way that this had gone and asked when he was getting the diamond. At that, Diane had to hide a smile. "On that, the President has decided that it would be good politics to return the Nadan-I-Noor to its rightful owners, so the State Department will be taking delivery of the diamond to hand it over to the Indian government in a formal ceremony."

The two men were enraged by this, Graham especially as he realised that he'd been beaten again by this team, but as the DNI had pointedly reminded him, a Presidential order was something you couldn't fight against, so there was nothing that they could do about it now. Of course, the fact that he'd advised the Administrator that using them was the best way to get the diamond also meant that he'd probably just lost one of his strongest allies, as there was always a chance that they may have been able to recover the diamond without the Human Intersect team, slim though it was.

They realised that they'd just upped the ante with Graham, but they were trying to do the job that they were meant to, and the fact that they'd further eroded his power base was a definite benefit for them, as the less support he had, the less he'd be able to come after them.

* * *

Carina and Zondra hadn't planned on staying at the Castle any longer than it took them to find places that suited their style. What they found, though, was that they quite enjoyed sharing an apartment, and the apartment they were in was quite comfortable and stylish. The convenience of living no more than a hundred yards from both of their 'work's would make life a lot easier, and more to the point, they REALLY liked living in the heart of their 'family', so that they could see any of them when they wanted. It didn't take them more than a week to decide and two weeks to be certain that they wanted to stay right where they were.

Of course, they did have to settle into their cover jobs. In many ways it was the perfect cover, a paramilitary security company that was well armed to protect celebrities and corporate assets, and Gertrude had already built a good reputation in L.A. and across the country for her previous company. The parent company in Texas was also owned by members of the shadow group, and most of the ones who came across from there had been working for that company, so they had experience in corporate security at least. Ilsa was the only one who hadn't been working in a security capacity (she'd been a photo journalist), but like Carina and Zondra, she was quite capable of picking up what she needed for the 'job'.

They were still working out of Gertrude's old business while the Shadow Security building was being built. It was obvious that the Shadow Security building was associated with the building beside it, because it was clad in the same mirror glass as the main building, including the panel lift doors on either side of the garage (it wasn't a yard any more, as it was roofed over). The heavy lifting work was done, the bunkers were in place, the exterior finished and all the major structural work done, now they just had to fit it out, which would take at least as long as the major work.

They were using the same contractors who'd done the Castle for them, so they were used to unusual requests from these people. That was why they didn't ask why the building had two totally separate bunkers underneath it. The Human Intersect bunker had an operations centre, containment area, armoury, small gym, medical bay and the like. The smaller Shadow bunker was primarily used to store the type of weapons and equipment that they didn't want others to see the employees using, because they had full facilities upstairs, and for anything serious there was access into the Dungeon and its facilities through the Shadow bunker.

* * *

They were still arguing about staff as well, well primarily Casey and the young lady who was determined to be his receptionist and assistant. Alexandra McHugh was just as stubborn as her father was, so those discussions were occasions to break out the popcorn and watch.

Lieutenant Alexander John Coburn was conned into leaving his whole life behind and starting over with a new name in January 1989. He was told that he didn't make the grade for Special Operations Command (even though he'd tested out at the top in every category), and as he was walking away, dejected, he was waylaid by a Colonel Keller who made him an offer which sounded like a dream come true. The Colonel knew all the right buttons to push and convinced him that he had a unique chance to serve his country, but to do that Alexander Coburn had to die so that he could become John Casey. John didn't know why Colonel Keller took the phone off him just as his fiancé started to tell him something, not for ten years until Chuck came across something and followed it up anyway. When Chuck showed him the evidence to prove that he had a nine year old daughter, Alexandra Johanna McHugh, who was born in August 1989, John was floored, he just sat and looked at the printout of her birth certificate and the line where it said Father: Alexander John Coburn.

It took all of them to talk him into accepting that his daughter deserved the right to know her father if that was what she wanted, but it was mostly Emma, and the anguish that he knew she went through every day because she couldn't find her daughter that convinced him. It would have been a slap in the face to her to know where his daughter was and NOT try to see her, when all she could think about sometimes was how much she missed Sammie.

It was an touchy situation when John turned up at her mother's house. Chuck and Emma had gone with him for moral support and Kathleen, his ex-fiancé, saw Emma as the woman he left her for and started to go off until Chuck stepped in to diffuse the situation. In the end, they sat down and talked through everything. Kathleen knew the man that she'd been engaged to and understood how, not knowing that she was pregnant, he would have accepted that she could have a good life without him and he could serve his country. If the phone hadn't been taken off of him, everything would have been different, but it was.

When John promised not to say anything about who he was, if he could just see his daughter, she looked at him as if he was crazy. "No! You're her father and she deserves a chance to know you! If you expect to see her and then leave, then you most definitely won't be seeing her! Alex, John, whoever you are now, your daughter needs her father. If that's what you've come here to be, then I'll support you in this, if not, leave now!"

Whatever response she expected to that outburst, it certainly wasn't the happy tears in all their eyes, especially the man she'd been engaged to. That answered her question though, so she went to get their daughter. It took a bit to get it through to nine year old Alex that her daddy wasn't dead, like they'd thought, and that he'd only just found out that he was her daddy, but they did, and John started being a part of his daughter's life.

Kathleen's husband took John coming back into their lives remarkably well, once Kathleen and John got it through to him that their daughter was really the only between them now and John wasn't a threat to his marriage, nor did he want to be.

That was how John became a part of his daughter's life. He taught her many things and supported her when she wanted to study criminal psychology at university, but when she argued that a business needed assistants to look legitimate and it would be the perfect part time job for her, they went head to head, and that was ever so entertaining to watch for everyone else.


	8. Wontons and Wedding Bells

**Sorry that the last chapter was a little long, but I just needed a few hundred more words to get me back over the million word milestone on the site, so I couldn't resist. ;^)**

 **Usual disclaimers, no rights to any characters portrayed and this isn't the real world or a Disney Princess story.**

Pasadena - November 2007

None of them were surprised when Alex got the job she was advocating for, because while she may have been over a foot shorter than Casey and half his weight, she could whip him any day of the week. Most of the time she didn't even have to break out the plaintive "Dad?" that could make him crack in five seconds flat. She was a good girl though, she didn't gloat, much.

With the effort required to get the Intersect team and Shadow Security established, they'd been dropping the ball with their business clients, so when they had a slow spell in the 'spy business', they made a push to catch up on that. That was how they ended up pulling another late nighter, and everyone was in the mood for Chinese, so Chuck and Sarah did a food run. As cliché as it was, all of Chuck's favourite Chinese restaurants actually were in Chinatown, so they headed down there, the drive also gave them time to talk about the proposal that Auntie Di had made about changing their cover.

The purpose of Diane's proposal was to shore up the move they'd made in getting married by making the scenario where Piranha Security & Technology and Lotus Security Systems had been bought out and became part of Carmichael Industries, which would have Charles and Sarah Carmichael running the business and becoming prominent in society circles. Having them well known as a successful married couple would seriously erode Sarah's ability to operate in other capacities, while further establishing their cover.

Another thing that played well into this scenario was that Chuck had actually done his post-graduate degrees at Caltech under the name of Charles Carmichael, citing a desire to separate himself from that nasty business at Stanford.

Diane's other proposal was for Charlemagne Computers Etc to fold, with their offices being taken over by Fox Information Consultants, an industry think tank that was also part of Carmichael Industries and was headed up by Emma Fox, Mary Frost and Eleanor LaBelle. Novatech would also continue as part of Carmichael Industries, run by Stephen Hunter. There was a fair deal of work involved in these changes, and it would cut them out of some types of missions, but that was the point, they didn't want those types of missions. The timing could be easily explained as being part of setting up the cover for the Human Intersect team.

* * *

Chinatown - November 2007

When they reached the Bamboo Dragon, an old favourite of Chuck's from when he was growing up, they ordered the food for the horde back at the office and stood back in the front of the restaurant, talking as they waited. One time Chuck glanced up though, he flashed on the tattoo in the inside of the forearm of one of the waitresses. Sarah felt him stiffen and snuggled into him, stretching up on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek and whisper "Did you flash?" He put his arm around her and bent down to kiss her on the other cheek so that she'd have a clear line of sight "Yes, the waitress at table twelve? She's Mei-Ling Cho, China's top operative, she's never been on U.S. soil before."

Sarah managed to make her gasp at that seem as though it was because of the way he was kissing his way up her jaw line and whispered "Are you sure?" "Pretty sure, yeah!" "Shit!"

She jumped, stepping back to get her phone from her pocket as if it had just rung on vibrate and called Casey on speed dial. As she brought the phone to her face she said "Da Dyadya Alexei?" as if she was answering a call before entering into a burst of rapidfire Russian in a petulant tone, glancing at Chuck and turning away to whisper the woman's name as if she were hiding something from him. When she'd hung up, looking upset, he asked what that was about? "Uncle Alexei, he is getting impatient for his food and won't accept that the delay isn't my fault!"

He put his arms around her and kissed her on the cheek to comfort her, whispering in her ear "You really are incredible, you know?" She kissed him on the cheek and responded "Why thank you, but I have to be to keep up with my husband. Casey said to try to keep an eye on her and he'll be here as soon as possible." He nodded "It was evil to use Russian though." She gave him an innocent look at that "What? I had to use a language that most people weren't likely to understand!" but gave herself away with the grin she finished with. He just grinned and kissed her.

When they got their food, they brought the van up so that they could cover the Bamboo Dragon with the cameras that it was equipped with, continuing the discussion about Diane's plans and eating while they were watching multiple windows on the smart glass screen across the inside of the windscreen. One thing they weren't sure about was the caveat that had been made that Roan wanted to create a penthouse for the Carmichaels that would 'create the image of who they were', because while Chuck loved Roan as the supportive Uncle he'd been to him ever since he was ten, he was under no delusions about the incorrigible lethario's character. Knowing his Uncle Roan as he did, he envisioned a totally decadent pleasure palace that would project an image that Chuck didn't think either of them wanted to be associated with.

It took nearly half an hour for Casey to turn up, which surprised them until he handed Chuck the thumb drive with everything they had on file for Mei-Ling Cho to plug into the on board computer. Sarah was getting more and more pissed as they went through the reports on Mei-Ling, until she turned to Chuck "Chuck?" "Yeah?"

"Every one of these reports was written by Commander Charles Carmichael, Major Philip Smith, Major Thomas Bowman, Lieutenant Commander Eleanor LaBelle, Lieutenant Colonel Nora Jones, Major Clara Devlin, Lieutenant Colonel Emma Fox, Commander Lisa Black, Lieutenant Colonel Mary Frost or Commander Elizabeth White!" "Yes?"

"They're ALL you, Ellie, Mama and Aunty Mary! Didn't you think it relevant to share that you guys are apparently the resident authorities on this agent?" "Not really, no."

Her voice was dangerously low as she asked "Why not?"

"Because nothing that we know about her from our research or the Intersect gives us any indication of what the hell she's doing here, I'm flying blind and I don't like it!"

At that point, Casey spoke up from the rear "Enough with the domestics! She's leaving!"

When they looked back at the screen, sure enough she was hurrying in bike gear around the corner from the kitchen entrance out back, which served as the employees' entrance. There was also a stretch limousine pulling away from the front of the Bamboo Dragon so Chuck asked "Did you see who's in the limo Casey?"

"Ben Lo Pan, he owns half of Chinatown and there's talk of him being involved with the triads." Just then Mei-Ling reappeared on a sports bike and started following the limo. Chuck mused, "Well he definitely seems to be who she's after" as he shut down the computer displays and pulled out to follow them, having an electric vehicle that saved time starting the engine and the like was handy.

* * *

The limo pulled up at another building in Chinatown and they hung back as Mei-Ling put her bike out sight around the corner from the limo, using the zoom lenses and wide spectrum imaging of the van's cameras to see what she was doing as she popped the compartment behind the seat open and extracted a couple of pistols. Casey made a crack about 'crotch rocket and Glocks, my kinda gal', but Chuck corrected him "They're not Glocks, they're Chinese military issue QSW-06s, and that changes things as they're not the sort of thing she'd use on a simple information gathering mission, they're more of a sanctioned assassination type of weapon!"

As they watched her climb the drainpipe to the roof of the building that Lo Pan had gone into, it was obvious that he was her target, so Sarah and Casey reluctantly agreed that it was their duty to stop the assassination of a prominent foreign national on U.S. soil. It rankled when they told that he couldn't be seen to be part of this so he had to stay in the car, but when Sarah got upset at his reaction he kissed her and told it was OK and to go.

Sarah and Casey didn't have any trouble dealing with guard outside the private club in the building, but when Sarah saw Mei-Ling with her pistols in hand and called out "Gun!" Lo Pan's guards started shooting at her and Casey! While most of the guards were shooting it out with Sarah, Casey and Mei-Ling, a small group got Lo Pan out of the club and the building.

When the doors burst open and they hustled Lo Pan out of the building, Chuck swore, grabbing his Glock 20 with a couple of extra mags and jumped out to run through the shadows towards them. He was almost up to the building when the doors burst open again and two of the guards came out, dragging a third man between them, one who was bound and hooded. Chuck had to slow to a fast meander when he came into the light, but they took no notice of him as they threw the man into the trunk and jumped into the limo as it took off.

Chuck broke into a run, drawing the 20 as he did so, but every spot he could shoot at could have endangered the man in the trunk, so he swore, grabbing one of the extra mags from his back pocket. He released the mag in the pistol, catching it as it dropped before inserting the other mag and pulling back the slide to eject the round in the chamber and load the first round from the new mag. He stopped and carefully took aim, firing the subsonic tracker round into a safe part of the bodywork before quickly tucking the pistol into the back of his jeans and bending down to pick up and pocket the round he'd ejected, just before Mei-Ling burst out of the building with her pistols extended at the rapidly departing limo.

* * *

When Chuck said "Don't shoot!" before she could fire, she turned the pistols on him "Where did they take him?" "Who?" "My brother! Where did they take him?"

Playing confused civilian seemed the safest course here, so Chuck said "He must have been the guy they threw in the trunk, that was why I tried to stop you shooting at the car, I don't know who they were or where they went, I was just passing and saw them throwing a guy in the trunk and ran up here to try and stop them."

She was starting to calm down a little when Sarah and Casey came barrelling out of the doors and freaked when they saw Chuck with two pistols pointing at his face, shouting "Federal agents, drop your weapons!" and aiming their pistols at Mei-Ling.

Mei-Ling couldn't understand the frustrated sigh that the man in front of her gave at that, but she saw all the signs of fear disappear as he said in flawless Chinese _'Cho Mei-Ling, you cannot help your brother by getting yourself killed, and I can assure you that will happen if you harm any of us. I do not want to see you dead, and I definitely do not want my companions harmed, as they mean a lot to me. Please, if you lower your weapons, I promise that we will help you find your brother, I fired a tracker into the car so we_ _wi_ _ll be able to follow them.'_

She just stared at him, she couldn't believe any of this, the way he looked down the barrels of her pistols without showing a shred of fear and spoke to her in such fluent Chinese. He was making sense though, because now she could see them she recognised the two agents behind him, there was absolutely no way she could take both of them and she would need help if she was to locate and rescue Li-Wei, so she lowered her pistols.

He nodded thanks when she did so and held out his hand speaking again, still in Chinese _'It w_ _ill help_ _diffuse the situation_ _if you hand over your weapons, they will be returned to you later.'_ She glanced at the other two and did as he asked. He bowed to her and turned to show the pistols to the others. They lowered their pistols but Sarah's anger was obvious as she gave Chuck a 'this isn't over!' look and Mei-Ling murmured "She is not happy with you!" He shook his head in sorrow "No, she is not."

* * *

Echo Park - November 2007

They put Mei-Ling's bike into the back of the van and went to Echo Park, where they still maintained a few apartments in the same complex where Ellie lived with her doctor boyfriend. They slipped into the one furthest away from Ellie's apartment and Chuck fired up the computer there, getting to work while Mei-Ling told her story.

He appeared totally engrossed in what he was doing, but often asked for clarification on points of what she was saying, so he was certainly paying attention. She observed him as she was talking, trying to reconcile the fact that he was obviously the one in charge, even though these other two were famous world class spies. She also observed the woman, Agent Sarah Walker, who she knew to be one of the most formidable spies in the western world, because she was obviously totally in love with this man.

After about fifteen to twenty minutes of this Chuck suddenly swore, hitting the desk hard enough for it to make a cracking noise, and stood up and stalked off. Mei-Ling saw Agent Walker look after him in concern, but they went to the computer to see what had angered him. What she saw up on the screens astounded Mei-Ling, because he'd somehow gotten into some of the Chinese government's most secure computer systems to extract everything about her, Li-Wei and his kidnapping. It also had the triad's demands to exchange Li-Wei for a senior triad captain and the government's refusal of their demand, but she couldn't see what had angered this, Chuck, so much until Agent Walker tapped on one screen. "This, this is what upset him."

Mei-Ling took note of the fact that this small group obviously had two people who were capable of reading Chinese reasonably, or more likely very, well. Which again brought up her earlier thought, just what was a group with two, no, three, Major John Casey was a world class spy of considerable repute as well, people of such calibre doing buried away here in Los Angeles? But even though Agent Walker had pointed it out, Mei-Ling couldn't understand what there was about that document that upset him so, it was the official notice that she had gone against her orders and was therefore officially disavowed by the People's Republic, it was essentially her death warrant but she knew that this would happen. It was a price she was willing to pay to get her little brother back to his family.

She turned a confused look at Agent Walker, and though the woman was talking to her, she was still looking after her man in concern "Family and what's right is everything to Chuck, and to him sanctioning you for trying to save your brother when they wrote him off is very, very wrong." Mei-Ling looked at John Casey for an explanation but he shook his head, indicating that he couldn't explain it, it was just the way the man was.

Chuck came back with a glass in one hand, and a bottle in the other. The bottle was over a third empty and the look John Casey gave it said that it had been unopened before. Chuck started speaking as he returned "We have two problems to address. The first, obviously, is to rescue Cho Li-Wei, hopefully unharmed, while the other is how to safely return him to the People's Republic. From that…." Pointing to her death warrant "You can't return him, as that would probably get both of you killed. The best bet would be to get our State Department people to return him, but they will undoubtedly demand a price for their assistance, and that price will most probably be you, or at least what you know."

"No! I will not betray my country, I could never return if I did that!" "I'm sorry to say this, but that..." Pointing to the document that amounted to her death warrant again "Says that you could never return anyway. I am sure that you know many things that you could share that would not cause any significant harm to the People's Republic?" He waited for her reluctant nod and then went on "Then you can share those things and we will do our best to get you put into the government's witness protection scheme afterwards." John Casey snorted at that and Mei-Ling looked at him with a question in her eyes, his response was "Let's just say that this isn't the first time he's engineered this type of thing, he knows what he's doing."

She turned back to Chuck "Very well, I will do this." He nodded "OK, let's get your brother back then!"

The tracker confirmed that the limo had gone to Lo Pan's mansion and stayed there. Chuck collected what information he could find about the security systems and force in Lo Pan's mansion and they put together a plan for Casey, Sarah and Mei-Ling to go in, attaching remote access devices to the security and computer networks so that he could get control of them. While he was doing this, he surreptitiously sent a message to the Castle to bring in the full Shadow Security crew as backup. They'd do it with just Casey, Sarah and Mei-Ling as they were discussing if they could, but the second anything went wrong he was sending the full team in, he wasn't going to risk Sarah, or any of them.

Sarah came over to wrap her arms around his shoulders as he explained a few things, and when Mei-Ling was out of line of sight he brought up the window with the message for her to see. He closed the window when she nodded to say that she'd read it and kissed him on the cheek.

* * *

When the team sent him a message to say that their eta at Lo Pan's was about ten minutes before they could get there, they left the apartment and headed there themselves, with Chuck driving the van slowly down the street for them to jump out on the move before parking out of sight to get into the systems when they enabled access. Initially, it went to plan, as soon as they got him into the systems, he took them over, turning off alarms, unlocking doors and directing them to the guards so that they could take them out quietly. As he was doing this, he was hacking into the computer systems and copying everything off them he could. Then the house camera feeds suddenly cut out and Casey and Sarah's cameras showed them being taken, so he sent the rest of the team in.

He saw the team going in over the fence, but was sure no-one else would. They went through the house like silent death, taking out the guards with suppressed weapons, knives or their bare hands. When they reached the room where Lo Pan was cackling about his brilliant plan though, Chuck had them hold off until Lo Pan had told everything, unless there was any indication of any action against Sarah, Casey, Mei-Ling or Li-Wei, in which case of course they'd take out everyone else in the room. As soon as Lo Pan told the guards to take them out of there Chuck gave the team the go order, and all of Lo Pan's guards were down in seconds. Chuck thanked them and asked them to deliver Lo Pan to the FBI office and tell them that the A/V and computer evidence would be sent to them.

* * *

When Sarah and the others came out, Chuck was waiting in the van for them and Mei-Ling just smiled when Sarah went straight up to kiss him. Normally she would have been angry to be out of the loop that much in an operation, but given the fact that they would have been taken and Li wouldn't have been rescued without his backup plan, she could hardly complain. In the van on the way back to Echo Park, Mei-Ling told her "Your man, he is exceptional" and Sarah just nodded happily "I know!"

At Echo Park, Casey took Li-Wei to another room while they contacted Diane to have her make the necessary arrangements with the State Department to deliver Li-Wei to the Chinese Consulate. Sarah noted the intense attention that Mei-Ling was paying Chuck through this and wasn't happy about it. She was even less happy when Mei-Ling asked to talk privately with him after they cut the link, so it took Chuck ten minutes to convince her that he'd be OK, and that they'd leave the door part way open so that he could call for help if he needed to. When she finally agreed with great reluctance, Chuck directed Mei-Ling to the spare bedroom where they could talk.

Mei-Ling looked at the partly open door and quietly asked "Do they know that you're Commander Carmichael, and Major Smith and almost certainly at least six or seven other intelligence operatives as well?" Chuck looked at her for about a minute before he said "I do not know what you are talking about Captain Cho."

The look she gave him said that she KNEW that he was the people she'd said without any doubt, so he shook his head "Yes they do, and we'd prefer to keep that very quiet, how did you know?"

"At first I didn't, I just thought you were someone exceptional, but as I watched you work I started recognising the patterns that I've observed from studying you for over ten years. You have quite a following in China you know, people like myself who follow your achievements, because even though you are not popular with our superiors because of the way you've thwarted the People's Republic so often, we appreciate and respect your brilliance."

"What do you intend to do with this knowledge Captain Cho?"

"Nothing, Comm…." Chuck held up his hand "Chuck, please" She nodded "Nothing Chuck, I am in your debt, you and your people's, for saving my brother. I know that you understand my culture well enough to know that is a life debt, I would never do anything against you or your people and whatever you need of me, you have but to ask and I will deliver it to the best of my ability."

He looked at her musingly "Would that extend to your working with us?"

She shook her head "There is no way that your government would ever trust a defector to be anywhere near someone as important as you...Chuck."

"You'd be surprised what we could arrange, the question remains, would you be prepared to work with us if it could be arranged?"

She smiled at him, she was beginning to see how Agent Walker could be so in love with him and so infuriated with him at the same time. "I do not believe that this could be approved, but yes, if it could be arranged, it would be my honour to work with you, Chuck."

He nodded and politely signalled her to precede him out of the room, stopping down the hall where Sarah was standing with a VAL, ready to come in firing if anything happened. He filled her in on everything they'd discussed, and while initially hesitant she agreed that Mei-Ling would be a great addition to the team. Back in the lounge room they asked Li-Wei if he'd wait in the other room with Major Casey again with they contacted their superiors and at Mei-Ling's reassuring nod he went with Casey.

Diane looked suspicious when Chuck called again to tell her that some of the arrangements that she was making would have to be changed. When he explained what he was after she was adamant that there was no way that that could be approved and Mei-Ling slumped in resignation, convinced that it was as she'd expected, but she jumped when Sarah reached over to squeeze her hand. When she looked at her, Sarah smiled reassuringly and shook her head. Mei-Ling smiled hesitantly when she got the message, 'don't give up yet!'

Mei-Ling was surprised when Chuck and the General's discussion changed to a excited torrent of Russian that she couldn't follow, no more than a word here or there anyway. In the end, the General looked unhappy, but she shocked Mei-Ling when she smiled fondly at him and said "You'll be the death of me yet Honey, put the case together and send it through, I'll present it to them. In the meantime I'll change the other arrangements as you've…..requested."

Chuck smiled at the screen "Thanks Auntie Di!"

* * *

She shook her head and asked "Have you thought about my proposal yet?" Chuck looked at Sarah and she nodded happily, his smile for her stayed on his face as he turned back to the screen "Yes Auntie Di, we'd like to do that, I'm just worried about what Uncle Roan may have planned…."

She shook her head again "Oh Honey, you know that he loves you and he'd never do anything to embarrass either of you, but if it makes you feel any better I'll make sure I look over all the plans and have final sign-off of everything to make sure that he doesn't do anything you won't like, will that work for you? Both of you?"

Chuck and Sarah looked at each other again and nodded with a smile, so Chuck answered "Yes Auntie Di, that would make us a lot more comfortable, thank you."

She nodded "OK, I'll contact the State Department, FBI and U.S. Marshals to make the changes to the arrangements for Miss Cho, we'll let you know when and where to deliver Mr Cho in the morning for State Department to escort him to the Chinese Consulate. By the way, the FBI asked me to pass in their thanks for Lo Pan and the evidence you supplied with him. Night Honey." With that she cut the link.

Chuck turned to Mei-Ling, who was looking stunned "I expect that you didn't get all of that?"

She shook her head.

"OK, you'll be taken to Washington D.C. by the FBI and remain in their custody, under General Beckman's orders, until you finish making your depositions, if State or anyone else tries to go off script or expand those sessions, General Beckman will order them finished and you'll go into the custody of her people. Once we get everything signed off by the relevant authorities, you'll come back here and work with us, under a different name of course, is that OK with you?"

She nodded, "Yes, but might I ask what that last part was about?"

Sarah stepped in to answer that "Chuck and I are married, legally, but not openly. I don't know how Chinese Intelligence expects its female operatives to operate, but some individuals in the American Intelligence agencies expect women agents to do things that I am no longer prepared to do, and always found repulsive. What the General has proposed is that our cover identities be changed to that of a high profile married couple, so that I couldn't do those types of missions without compromising our established cover, and our team is too important for that to be allowed. Someone else who is part of our extended family has asked to be given leave to create our business and residential presences to present the right image, and while we love him, well do you have any beloved uncles who have a tendency to be quite often inappropriate in your family?"

Mei-Ling had laughter in her eyes as she nodded at that "Well that's Uncle Roan, we had no doubt that he'd mean well, but it was the question of just what image would be presented that worried us, so having the General there to provide the necessary checks and balances makes us much more comfortable."

When Li-Wei came back with Casey, he wanted to know what Mei-Ling and Sarah were laughing about, but he joined in the laughter when Mei-Ling told him _'They_ _were_ _just t_ _elling_ _me that they have an uncle like_ _Uncle Li-Wei who you were named after_ _in their family too.'_

In the morning, Sarah and Casey delivered Li-Wei to the State Department people, and they were notified when he was safely back on Chinese soil in the Consulate. The call came through just before they had to take Mei-Ling to Bob Hope Airport to be flown to D.C. to start her depositions.

* * *

Pasadena - November 2007

The contractors arrived the next day to start work on the new penthouse level, so the initial plans at least had obviously met with Auntie Di's approval. The wedding planning committee ended up being made up of Ellie, Emma, Anna, Alex, and Casey and Carina surprisingly. They were pressured by the powers that be into having a military wedding, but no-one in the family was surprised when Chuck stuck to his guns about Anna being his 'best man', she'd been his best friend and family since he was ten and he didn't turn his back on either. Casey and Jeff were the other Groom's men while Ellie was the Maid of Honour and Carina and Zondra were the Bride's maids and Roan was giving the bride away, so they had the wedding party sorted, and the wedding would be performed by a Navy Chaplin, so they were halfway there.

Roan used his charm to have influential people talk Vera Wang into doing the dresses for the wedding party, and she insisted on having custom tailored uniforms made up for the groom's side as well, including the 'best man'. Half of them were heading to Washington for meetings at least once a week anyway, so getting to New York for the fittings wasn't that difficult. Roan also helped procure the wedding location, a beautiful spot on an estate atop the Malibu sea cliffs.

* * *

In the middle of this, Langston Graham was forced to come to the Human Intersect team again in an attempt to recover someone that the CIA had lost and couldn't locate. He would have preferred to just have this embarrassment eliminated before he could talk to anyone, but he was too smart to try and demand that the Intersect team to do that.

Instead, he painted Laszlo as a high value asset, but someone who was a dangerous lunatic, hoping to instil enough doubt in them that when Laszlo did the sort of things he was bound to do, they might misconstrue it and would end up shooting him when they tried to recover him.

Graham's problem was that he still had no idea of just how much was stored in the Intersect database, and even less about just what Chuck, especially, could get out of the CIA's systems and archives. That meant that as soon as he identified Laszlo Mahnovski as a high value asset who had to be recovered at all costs, but had killed his handlers quite gruesomely (supplying copious pictures of this) in a psychotic incident when he escaped from the facility where he was, the alarm bells started going off and they immediately started digging through the CIA's systems to find out everything there was to know about Laszlo Mahnovski.

He also didn't know any of them very well if he thought that he could make the agents in THIS team nervous enough to shoot Laszlo instead of finding a way to capture him.

The others couldn't work out why Chuck got quieter and quieter as he looked into Laszlo's story, until he put it all up on screen. They understood then, because with slightly different circumstances, Chuck could well have been caught up in the same type of nightmare and this could have been his life. That chilled everyone's blood, Casey just looked up at the screen and said "Chuck me!" in a despairing, horrified tone that translated to 'Oh, fuck no!"

Laszlo was a genius, at Chuck's level if not above in scientific areas though he didn't seem to have Chuck's range. When he was eleven, a CIA recruiter who'd been trolling for late high school and college age prospects had discovered him in an arcade parlour and having absolutely no morals or compunctions about taking a child's life away, had talked his unsuspecting parents into signing control of him over to the CIA's representatives, convincing them that they could give him everything he needed to make the most of himself.

He'd earned his degrees at fourteen, and his Ph D at seventeen, but he hadn't seen the outside world since then. The CIA had been using him like they had Stefan to create whatever technology they wanted, and they'd kept him locked away in an underground bunker without any access to the outside world to ensure that he did that. That was one of the few things that Graham had told the truth about, he was a lunatic. Because of the fact that Laszlo never saw anyone but his handlers or left the facility where he was, according to the reports they found, the life he'd been forced to live had driven him more than a little crazy!

Reading this made one thing clear to everybody, they had to get to Laszlo before the CIA and rescue him! They knew that the CIA had a head start, because Graham wouldn't have engaged them until he was fairly sure that his own people couldn't find him, but they did have one big advantage. While the CIA's agents thought like, well, agents, Chuck, Anna and their crowd, but especially Chuck thought like a nerd, like Laszlo. Going through Laszlo's history, it took less than an hour for Chuck to realise where he'd be, the arcade where the Antichrist had found him and taken away his innocence, his life, when he was eleven.

Time was of the essence here as they were racing the CIA, so they planned on the fly, Casey couldn't go in because he looked like a cop and he'd scare everyone off. Sarah, Carina and Zondra, hell, most of the girls, were too tall and beautiful for nerdland, even if people didn't question why they were there, they'd attract too much attention. They decided that Chuck and Anna would go in to look for him, as Anna was part of that world, could change her appearance with makeup and at just over five foot tall, she didn't stand out like the other girls. They took along 'tranq' darts that contained a drug left the target conscious, but without control of their motor functions, so they couldn't call out or struggle. Sarah and Casey would be waiting in a van just off-site to extract them or engage the CIA if they turned up.

All of this was decided in the fifteen minutes it took for Chuck and Anna to change into something that would blend into the crowd in the arcade while the others grabbed the darts etc and jump in the van, then they were heading for the Santa Monica Pier. Anna found Laszlo in under fifteen minutes as he was involved in a Guitar Shredder battle with some bearded loser who was too old to be acting like a brat throwing a tantrum the way that he was. Even with his rampant paranoia, it didn't take Anna that long to entice Laszlo off to a dark corner to make out, and they were in the middle of this when Chuck stuck the dart into him, grabbing him to prevent him collapsing.

The others had to laugh a little at the way that Anna was swearing about having to make out with a guy like that, though Sarah could sympathise with her having to do something that repugnant to her. Casey was having an insensitive moment and said something about 'But you kiss Chuck all the time, you kiss me some times too' so Anna snapped back "That's different! I love Chuck, and I even love you sometimes like a caring but rather dysfunctional uncle!" That was enough to draw a contrite "Sorry sweetie, I wasn't thinking." from him and they could hear the affection in her voice as she said "And that's why I love you sometimes, when you're like this. It's OK John, but don't think or expect making out with some random guy like that is anything I'll ever LIKE doing!"

By this stage, Chuck had gotten Laszlo's duster off of him and shrugged into it, making other changes as well so that neither of them looked the same as they had earlier. He gave Anna a kiss and sent her out one way while he 'walked' Laszlo out another way (making it look easy even though he was carrying him), saying "You promised that you weren't going to take that shit any more! This is the last time, you're on your own after this!" as he went. Those who heard put it down to a habitual drug user who always had to be bailed out and looked after by his buddy, and half of them were saying to themselves 'Yeah, you say that now, but next time he calls you'll come to bail his arse out again, because that's what friends do.'

Anna was out front watching, and as Chuck came out with Laszlo, she called the van in, it came in quick and Casey hauled Laszlo in, with Chuck and Anna hopping in and the van taking off within twenty seconds. Sarah kept the speed as they departed down to avoid attracting attention, as she'd spotted a couple of CIA agents heading for the pier. They'd only just found and extracted him in time, because even if he had eluded those agents, he would have gone to ground and Graham would have flooded the area with agents, though the CIA had no legal authority to operate on U.S. soil like that.

Chuck administered the antidote to the drug he'd given him, but also gave him a sedative to put him out. Back at the Castle, they put him in the apartment in the dungeon, watching for when he started to wake up. When he did, Chuck went in to talk to him "Hi, I'm Chuck, how are you feeling?"

"You drugged me!"

"Yeah, I did, and just in time, too." He brought up the video that the van's cameras had taken as they drive away, stopping it when it showed the agents that Sarah spotted. "I presume you know what they are?" Laszlo spat out "CIA!"

Chuck nodded "Yeah, that was taken as we were leaving, do you remember the driver saying "Fuck!"? Laszlo nodded "That was why."

"Are you telling me that you aren't CIA?"

"No, well my wife is still technically CIA but we don't work for them, and we don't like them, especially Director Graham."

"But that bitch who conned me to get me into that corner for you was an agent!"

Chuck's pleasant expression slipped "Don't call her a bitch! She's my best friend! And no, even though she's had agent training she's not an agent. In fact I'm do my best to avoid her if I were you as she doesn't swing that way so what she had to do with you was quite repugnant to her, and she could very easily kick your arse if you said or did the slightest thing to upset her."

Laszlo was totally confused by now, all the more so because he actually believed what this guy was telling him. "So what happens now?"

"We need to get you away from here as quick as we can, because as you saw the CIA ARE out to get you. We've got a plane coming in today to take you back east where our people can get you out of sight for a while." He hesitated here, as what he said next could go really badly.

"Laszlo, we want to put you in therapy with our psychiatrist, you were put through a lot of shit over the last sixteen years and…."

Laszlo cut him off "Chuck, it's alright, I'm not so fucked up that I don't know that I'm fucked up." It was his turn to hesitate "How do I know that this IS therapy and not the agency brainwashing me to go back to work though?"

Chuck looked him in the eye "You don't I guess, all I can tell you is that we have someone else over there working with Doctor Dreyfus to deal with his problems, my father, and the agent who will be escorting you back there will be staying for a while, partly as part of your security, but also because she needs to work through the issues she has from what she was forced to do by her agency. You should be able to tell who my father is when you see him. Hopefully that may give you a little more confidence."

"OK, presuming that this is what you say it is and it works, what happens after that? Can you help me stay away from the CIA?"

"I think so, first thing we need to do is change your name, as both Laszlo and Mahnovski are too distinctive. We came up with Leslie Mahoney as the closest name phonetically that isn't likely to be linked to your original name." Laszlo tried 'Leslie Mahoney' on the tongue a few times and nodded, he thought he could get used to that easy enough.

Chuck nodded "In that case, we'll start using that from now. Now we weren't planning on going into this until afterwards, but my father was actually your predecessor in making the technology that the CIA, or Graham at least, wanted. He did something stupid and desperate over sixteen years ago and he's been having therapy to try to deal with it ever since, but he still has the brain that made him what he was, and he's been coming up with the equipment that the group that I work with needs for the last thirteen years or so when he's able to work. What we had in mind was to offer you a choice when you and Doctor Dreyfus think that you're ready, to either go into the witness protection scheme, and hope that the CIA or someone else doesn't find you and put you to work, or work with my Dad. It would be different from what you were doing for the CIA because you would always have the right to refuse to work on anything you didn't agree with. I can guarantee that because I'm in charge of that group, I work with Dad sometimes and manage everything."

Laszlo no, Leslie, nodded thoughtfully "OK, I guess I'll have time to talk to your father while we're there, but working for you on interesting projects and being able to say no certainly sounds more interesting than dying of boredom somewhere out in Bumfuck Idaho."

Chuck grinned at that and nodded. He dropped some clothes on the chair and pointed out the bathroom, saying "You've got time to have a shower and freshen up before you have to head for the airport." Once again, he hesitated before continuing. "I know that you can probably get into our systems if you try, if you do, don't fuck with them, we rely on them to protect our family and interfering with that will lose any goodwill you have with us. Also, don't try to screw with the agent who's flying back east with you, she's a friend as well, my wife's best friend, and you'll find that we're very protective of the people we love. You don't want to find out how far we'll go to protect the people we love, trust me on that!"

Leslie just nodded without saying a word, this was the second time he'd seen that look in Chuck's eye and he had no doubt that he meant what he said and was quite capable of following through on the implied threat.

Half an hour later, there were teary goodbyes as Carina headed to the airport with Leslie, they knew that she'd be back in a few weeks for the wedding, and the girls would see her before then at the dress fittings, but it hadn't been that long since she came back into Sarah's life and she'd be back east with Dr Dreyfus until she could get her head straightened out from what she'd been made to do for the DEA for so long.

* * *

They played Graham along for about a week, telling him that they had no sightings of the target, then Diane started asking how much longer the CIA was expecting to tie her team up with this and pointing out that they would be charged for the operating costs for her entire team for the period that they were demanding that they concentrated on this manhunt of his. When he demanded to know what she was talking about, she made a show of looking up the figure and told him that the bill stood at four hundred and twenty thousand at the moment, and that would be increasing by sixty thousand a day, plus expenses.

Graham started saying that she better not try to present any bills to the CIA, or else and she cut him off. "Or else what, Director? You signed off on the terms to engage the Human Intersect team when you signed the agreement, this was all clearly stated in those documents. You seem to have forgotten that you're not paying the operating costs for the project out of your budget because it's not part of your organisation. The Human Intersect project does not have ongoing operations funding, so we have been authorised to operate on a pay as you go basis to supply the necessary operating funds. The terms, as I said, are sixty thousand a day or part thereof plus any expenses, such as bringing in FBI or ATF support teams, flying prisoners or the team around, acquiring what's required or replacing damaged equipment and the like when engaged for physical operations such as this and lower fees for simple information processing. The FBI is our biggest 'customer', followed by the NSA and the Cyber Command groups, and none of them have had any issues or complaints. Believe me, Director, the CIA will continue pay the bills when presented or you will no longer have use of any Human Intersect Project services!"

Graham abruptly cut the link without a word at that and she smiled at the screen before she cut the link, too.

Half an hour later, Diane got an email from Graham, after he'd read the agreement and tore strips of the people who hadn't told him that they had to pay each time for these services, instructing her to discontinue the search for Laszlo Mahnovski and present the bill. She smiled herself as she ordered that a bill for four hundred and eighty thousand be presented to the CIA, with a reminder about the 'part thereof' section of the fee scale, and also a reminder about their one week payment terms and late payment penalties. The way that Chuck added every clause possible to establish an ironclad fee structure and enforce timely payment into the agreements gave her a great deal of satisfaction at that point.

* * *

Malibu - December 2007

The day of the wedding dawned fine and sunny, which was a great relief to everyone, seeing that it was an outdoor wedding. The last of the participants and guests had arrived in Los Angeles the previous night, and they'd been mingling at the wedding venue for a while before the wedding. There were a few eye openers with the number of three and four star Generals and Admirals present, and some notable politicians as well, such as the DNI and the Secretary for Defense, but the biggest shock for those who recognised her was the presence of the CIA's Director of the National Clandestine Services, Jane Bentley.

Emma had a nice conversation with Jane while they were waiting for the bride and groom to arrive. Sarah had told her how Jane had helped her when she was her handler, and when she was her mentor she gave her someone to turn to after that, so Emma was fairly well disposed towards Jane for looking after her little girl.

When the ceremony started, those who hadn't known about it were making quite a few comments about the fact that the 'best man' was in fact a rather small WOMAN, but they were pointedly told to shut up by those who knew the bride and groom. The fact that most of the people who knew them appeared to be rather dangerous had the effect of silencing any comments very quickly.

The only glitch during the actual ceremony was the fact that Chuck, or rather Commander Carmichael, had to be prompted to respond as he was looking at his bride in a happy daze. An elbow in the ribs from his 'best man' got him back on track though.

After the kiss (which had the DNI thinking that Agent Walker was apparently doing wonders for Mr Bartowski's emotional state), there was another surprise, in that there were four separate sword arches, one for each service. Any questions about that were merely answered with the fact that the bride and groom had operated with all four services and therefore it was deemed only appropriate that they should all be represented.

The reception was on the lawn beside where the actual wedding ceremony was held, the tables set up around the edges of the parquet dance floor laid over the grass. They had to thank Roan again, as the setting was utterly beautiful. There was a quite a bit of laughter when the first woman that the groom danced with after his bride was in fact his 'best man', but next after her was his sister, as the maid of honour, then the two bride's maids, then his new mother in law, mother, Auntie Di, 'Aunt Jane' and most of the women working for Shadow Security after that.

Alex McHugh won the unofficial contest among the women for who could be the most inappropriate when kissing the groom hands down, though she probably would have lost to Anna if she hadn't been in uniform and therefore required to behave with decorum. As it was, Alex got looks from both the bride and her father which said that they'd be having SERIOUS talks with her later. She was embarrassed when she thought about what she'd done, but she'd pretty much had a crush on Chuck from the day she met him when she was nine, so when she had a chance she went for it.

Nearly all of the men behaved themselves when kissing the bride, as they respected and admired her, and they were quite aware of what she could do to them if they incurred her wrath. The only one who was at all inappropriate with her was Ellie's boyfriend, Devon Woodcomb, who was more familiar with her than the bride and groom, his girlfriend or their parents, were at all happy about. He was oblivious to the reactions he was getting and had no idea about how close he was to being thrashed and thrown off the cliff by most of them, but he'd certainly be finding out when his girlfriend got him home!

The bride and groom were driven back to the Castle in the Continental by Vicky and Alex Forrest, who's chauffeur's 'uniforms' were eye openers, as the skirts were rather shorter than would normally be considered acceptable, showing off remarkable amounts of remarkable legs. The car itself was also very interesting. It looked like a heavily modified and stretched sixties Lincoln Continental Convertible, like one of the Presidential stretched convertibles, but it was in fact more special than that, as it was a ground up custom creation of Chuck and his father. Chuck really preferred it to the stretch Town Cars they normally used, but it was generally too distinctive to use on missions.

* * *

Pasadena - December 2007

Back at the Castle, Chuck took his bride up to the Keep (as the penthouse had been designated, being at the top of the Castle), and they saw it for the first time. Looking around, they were stunned and Chuck thought that he really had to apologise to Uncle Roan for ever doubting him, because this was magical.

They weren't planning on taking long before getting to the bedroom, but they did want to have a look around first, starting with the formal lounge, this was a large, elegant room with flat screens on the walls and they noted that all of the furniture sat on lockable rollers to allow it to be rearranged or moved out of the way quickly and easily for functions. Next came the formal kitchen, which was commercial grade, quite capable of catering for large functions, with the formal dining area which could handle twenty or more people easily beside it. The pair of light and airy guest rooms on either side all had spacious en-suites and built in wardrobes.

There was a row of toilets across the rear of the guest rooms on one side (to serve the guests at functions), while the rather large games room/cinema room filled the space from the other guest rooms to the corner, and another pair of guest rooms ran along the far wall from the games room. There was cosy, quiet lounge area in the corner between the toilets and the partition that could be used to close off the private wing.

The private wing started with a cosy informal kitchen/dining room, then came an unusual guest bedroom with an ensuite that included a bath, a whole wall of built in wardrobes and an adjoining door with the master bedroom. The rest of the private wing was the master bedroom with a large bathroom and walk in wardrobe/dressing room, the large gym/work room looking out over the roof garden which also had an ensuite, and a private lounge area between the rooms and the internal glass walls. Oh, and the private elevator that came up through the bathroom of the executive offices outside the kitchen. Looking around the private wing, they realised that they'd be spending most of their time in here and it would be just right for them, though that massive 8' by 10' ultrabed and the jacuzzi bath and shower which could easily hold four people raised a few questions that they weren't sure that they wanted to ask, for fear of what the answers may be.

Overall though, it was incredible, as was what they could see of the luscious roof garden and the pool that went across the other end of it. They stood there with their arms around each other and agreed that they needed to apologise to Uncle Roan for ever doubting him, and thank him for creating this for them. With that, they undressed each other and went to try out that deliciously decadent bed.


	9. Out With The Old, In With The New

**Usual disclaimers, no rights to any characters portrayed, this isn't the real world and it's not a Disney Princess story.**

Pasadena - December 2007

Because of all the issues the family were facing, the option of going away for a honeymoon wasn't available to Chuck and Sarah, but they did have their own little resort in the Keep, and it had been well stocked before the wedding, so they spent a week up there, away from everyone else. For that week, they spent every waking moment together, or Sarah's every waking moment anyway, as Chuck usually managed to get five or six hours' work in each night while she slept, and given the intensity with which he worked, that was equivalent to something like twelve hours' worth for most people.

In the week that they were 'out of the office', Diane and Roan got the contractors in to remodel the offices and do the change from Piranha to Carmichael Industries, with the Carmichaels at the wheel. Anna took over the apartment that she'd shared with Chuck and Sarah, and at the moment she was sharing it with Ellie much of the time, because things between Ellie and Devon had been rather strained since the wedding. After the raging fight they'd had over the fact that as far he was concerned, he hadn't done a thing wrong, Ellie locked up her 'study', grabbed a bag of clothes and said she was going home for a few days.

Alex's discussion with her father had gone slightly differently, in that she conceded that she'd gone too far with Chuck and would take her lumps from Sarah because she knew she deserved it, but only her! She wasn't going to take being lectured to about it from him or anyone else.

While not exactly an epic honeymoon, a week of devoting themselves to each other left both of them relaxed and happy for when they returned to work. Just as he had with the Keep, Roan had done one hell of a job with the offices, and the executive row was now made up of Sarah Carmichael as the Chief Executive Officer, with Charles Carmichael as the Chief Technology Officer and Anna Wu as the Chief Operating Officer to either side of her office.

Roan had also remodelled the Charlemagne offices for the Fox Information Consultants' office, setting up their executive row with Emma in the centre as the CEO and Mary and Ellie to either side as the principal consultants. The rest of their group was made up of four analyst/controllers from the shadow group, who'd been managing other deep cover operations in the United States when the Soviet Union collapsed and they were abandoned, and two others from the shadow group who were the children of ex-deep cover analysts.

As soon as Chuck and Sarah came back to work, Alex went to have that discussion about what she did at the wedding with Sarah. The fact that she came to Sarah and started out by saying that she knew that she was wrong diffused Sarah's anger enough for them to discuss the matter calmly. Sarah was still pissed off about what she did, but she could get over it without it effecting their relationship this way.

* * *

Echo Park - January 2008

Ellie did go back to Devon after a few weeks, but when the girls in Shadow Security who were were living in the other apartments in the Echo Park complex as 'stewardesses' told her that he was still trying to crack onto them behind her back after she moved back in, she kicked him out for good. He tried to argue that he had as much right to live there as she did, until she pointed out to him that it was only her name on the lease because he didn't want to put up half of the bond, so her family had paid the whole thing.

While they were arguing, Mike and Zoe came over to see what was going on. When Devon tried to tell them to mind their own business and get out, he saw a very different side of the nice, if imposing, couple, one which had him packed and out of there in less than an hour, working frantically under Mike's baleful gaze, and Chuck's as well after he and Sarah came over in response to Zoe's call.

A couple of months after that, Ellie transferred out of the Westside Medical Centre, citing the tension of dealing with Devon and his friends as the reason, as they were making it uncomfortable for her to be there. Losing a few more of their best doctors over the next few months because of 'the changing culture in the hospital' upset the administrators of the hospital quite a bit. Of course Westside would never know that the only reason that those doctors had been there at all was to watch over Ellie, and they were following her so that they could keep watching over her as they were all from the shadow group.

Being associated with the reason that the medical centre lost its 'best and brightest' was enough to put the brakes on Devon's fast rise based on the Woodcomb family name though, so he went to the apartment to abuse Ellie for ruining his career.

When Yuri wrenched the door open and growled "What you bash on my door like that for?" Devon stumbled back, because Yuri dwarfed him, and he was a pretty frightening guy to boot. "Ah, I'm looking for Ellie Bartowski?"

"I not know that name. Go!"

"But she lives here!"

"I live here! She must be woman who left to get away from ex. Go!"

"Where did she….?" Devon broke off and ran as Yuri ducked through the doorway and started advancing on him.

Yuri barely managed to hold it in until Devon had jumped on his car and hurriedly taken off down the road before he broke down laughing, and Mike, Zoe and the others who were home at the time came out to join him. Every now and then one of them would repeat one of Yuri's lines and they'd all crack up again.

Ellie had moved into the apartment with Anna soon after she transferred to the Department of Neurology at the University of California Irvine's School of Medicine in a research capacity. It was a bit of a drive, but UC Irvine had the best Neurology research program in Los Angeles, so it was worth it.

The other doctors who'd left Westside also transferred to the UC Irvine School of Medicine. They had little trouble securing places there with their reputations, but that was why it had been such a slap in the face for Westside, to have doctors that good join and then leave again well inside of twelve months, on top of losing one of the brightest young doctors they'd ever seen, it didn't look good.

* * *

The Human Intersect Team had a quiet period for the ensuing months, they were doing missions for the FBI and NSA and processing a lot on intel, but the Intersect mission work was light, which let them consolidate Carmichael Industries and put more time into their Special Projects work. It also gave Chuck and Sarah the opportunity to establish the Carmichaels as one of the well known couples of both the west and east coast society circles. The purpose of spreading their appearances across the 'in' places of both coasts was for a number of reasons.

Firstly, it allowed them to use their status to get into events around the country.;  
Secondly, it meant that their arguments to keep Sarah away from anything she (all of them really) didn't want to do applied pretty much all over the country.;  
And thirdly, it fit into Charles Carmichael's back story.

The back story that they'd created and established in all the relevant places for Charles Carmichael had him as part of a wealthy family on the east coast. He'd been orphaned young when his parents were killed in a car crash, but his relatives had just punted him off to military schools after his parents died. From there he went into the Navy's ROTC program at MIT to become a Naval Aviator, and he'd mustered out of the Navy when his time was up. He'd met Sarah back when he was at MIT and she was at Harvard, and they'd been together since then, but had held off getting married until he was nearing the end of his active service and the dangers associated with that. When he left the Navy, he used the money he'd inherited once he came of age to fund the creation of Carmichael Industries, and that was why they were only now showing up in the business and Society circles.

They incorporated as much truth as they could into his story, as Charles Carmichael HAD completed a degree at MIT, and he was a Naval Aviator (which had been useful when he flew supersonic jets back and forth across the country those times he HAD to be at MIT), so they modified the dates all over the place, including in his formal 'sealed' records and inserted some of the achievements from his other military identities as well to justify him getting to Commander in half the time. They also created and established Sarah's employment history from when she finished at Harvard to tie into this story.

This also provided the vehicle to show that the Carmichaels always had the Shadow Security people with them for protection. They'd let it get around the security business that Carmichael Industries had bought Shadow Security from its parent company to ensure that they would have their services on demand, so while they still provided security for other clients, Carmichael Industries was now their biggest customer.

* * *

Langley - January 2008

While the team were consolidating their covers and getting themselves established, Langston Graham was working on his own plans. Even with his recent misfortunes he still had considerable political support, and through that he got the funding he needed to fast track the rebuilding of the Intersect systems authorised. He couldn't cut Beckman out of the process as she was the Co-Director of the Intersect Project, but he was the one in control of the game this time as he'd ensured that any discussions they had on the matter of rebuilding the Intersect Computers were in front of people who were convinced that they needed to Intersect Computer operational, so she couldn't argue against it without weakening her position. Of course, the discussions he had about the HUMAN Intersect were another matter altogether.

He made certain that Beckman and her supporters never heard about those discussions, but they were successful, as he'd manage to convince enough of the top brass that the risks inherent in leaving a mentally fragile civilian running around with the secrets of the nation in their head were unacceptable. He'd also used the incidence of high value prisoners disappearing from CIA and NSA black sites to make a convincing argument that grabbing him and throwing him in a hole wasn't a safe enough solution either, as the 'other side' may still be able to grab him and use him against the nation. No, the ONLY solution was to eliminate the threat as quickly and cleanly as possible, he made a point of saying that the Human Intersect's contribution had earned him a quick and clean death, but tried to look sympathetic as he said that the risk was just too great to let him live.

Confident that the new Intersect Computer was on track and he had assurances that Bartowski would die as soon as it came on line, Graham turned to what was, to him, the big issue, getting Walker back under his control and finding a way to manage her. He'd only ever had two things that he could hold over Walker, and had to accept the primary one, her mother, wasn't really usable any more as Walker would be bound to demand to see her to make sure that she was OK, because ever since she'd joined Beckman's team she seemed to have stopped being afraid of him. As he'd never actually HAD her mother where he could make good on his threats, he had to do something with the far lesser value option, her father. Jack Burton had obviously slipped even further in importance to his daughter over the years, in fact it seemed as though she might have forgotten about him for the most part, so they'd have to do something about that.

Graham made the arrangements to have Jack Burton released, and went to see him on his last day, telling him how Jenny was doing well with her rich mark in L.A. and telling him that a condition of his release was that he stay away from her and anything to do with cons. The threat about arresting him and ensuring that he was put away for the rest of his life was playing on Burton's ego, as was telling him that his daughter had a rich mark and then ordering him to stay away from her or anyone else he'd done cons with. He knew that that would only guarantee that Burton would run out and do exactly what he'd threatened him not to, just to try and show that he was smarter than Graham and everyone else. The final touch was to 'grudgingly' give him Sarah's phone number so that he could at least talk to his daughter, because he wasn't allowed to see her.

It was now a certainty that Burton would head straight for L.A. and try to work his daughter's mark, and almost certain that he'd also try to pull other cons first in an attempt to impress her. Graham would let them have a hopefully tearful reunion and then once he deemed that they'd bonded enough, he'd grab Burton and lock him up again, to have something to hold over her. Sarah Walker was harder to work than anyone else had ever been, but she was also the best agent he'd ever seen by far, so he HAD to get her under his control again!

* * *

Carina had been back from D.C. for a couple of months now and she was handling things a lot better, working with Doctor Dreyfus had been good for her. Even dealing with the Administrator of the DEA and DEA agents didn't disturb her equilibrium now. She was settling back into things quite nicely, though Chuck wondered why she was trying to cover up her nightly calls to Leslie, especially as Doctor Dreyfus was saying how much good they were doing both of them.

* * *

Pasadena - June 2008

They were little surprised when Graham engaged the Human Intersect team again, as he'd been relegating that function to the Director of the National Clandestine Service for any CIA engagements since Diane had had her fun with him over the fact that he'd be paying for their services whether he liked it or not. None of them were complaining in the least about that, as it was far more pleasant, efficient and professional to deal with Jane Bentley. They could see from what flashed briefly across Diane's face as Graham was talking that she understood why he was handling this himself, so they'd be talking to her about that separately.

Graham had trouble keeping the triumphant smile off his face until he got off the link to Beckman's team, as this was perfect, because when they got the cipher for him, that would be the end of the Human Intersect team, and especially that pain in the arse Charles Bartowski! As soon as the cipher was recovered and they activated the Intersect computer, which was being finished at that very moment, he could give the people he'd lined up the signal to put their plans in play to have Beckman's Human Intersect eliminated as the risk to national security that he was.

Of course he was furious about the need for them to recover the cipher, as it was now obvious that the DNA of that 'lab technician' who'd disappeared from hospital after the last Intersect was blown up would in fact match the corpse of 'Jonas Zarnow' if they exhumed it. Graham was kicking himself now, Zarnow had been in the building when it blew up and he knew the value of the cipher to the Intersect Computer, but when they found no trace of the cipher in the wreckage and Zarnow's ID on an unrecognisable body, he hadn't questioned it or ordered the identity of the cadaver confirmed, he'd just accepted it like everyone else. That made him feel like a fool and he was going to make sure someone paid for that!

On top of that, Beckman had identified one of the other bodies as the engineer who'd built the cipher, because no-one else could get it to work, and they hadn't been able to find any detailed designs to re-create it, it was as though everything to do with the final cipher design had been scrubbed from the system. When she gave him that news, they'd assigned their best and brightest the job of building them a working cipher, but they hadn't been able to come up with anything remotely close to that, no matter what resources they were given to get the job done.

That was why when the word started circulating about the cipher being offered to the highest bidder, he knew that he had to get it. He'd had his agents chasing any leads ever since the word first came out, but they hadn't turned up a thing, and time was running out. Graham would never admit this to anyone else, but even with a flaky civilian as the Intersect, Beckman's team was far, far better than anyone else could ever hope to be, so they were the only hope to recover the cipher before it was sold. Even if it cost another half million, million or more to get them to recover it, that was a drop in the bucket compared to what it would cost to BUY the cipher, so he bit the bullet and engaged them to recover the cipher. At least he'd have the satisfaction of knowing that they delivered the very thing that would destroy them.

* * *

When they started another secure link with Diane after the video-conference with Graham had finished, she was looking haggard, so something was obviously wrong. She explained just what the cipher was, but then she faltered, and Chuck stepped in "It's alright Auntie Di, I understand that they'll be putting out a termination order on me."

Sarah, Casey, Carina and Zondra reacted to that, because they hadn't made the correlation between the new Intersect being up and getting rid of the old one yet. As Diane didn't appear up to explaining that yet, Chuck did. "As soon as the new Intersect's operational, people will be arguing that it's an unacceptable risk to have a civilian running around with all the nation's darkest secrets in his head, because he could be grabbed and used against the nation. The obvious solution that they'll put forward, if they haven't already, is that that risk needs to be eliminated to protect the nation."

When he put it like that, the four agents were angry at themselves for not seeing it before. The biggest surprise was the fact that Casey was only slightly less incensed about this than Sarah was, as they were both ready to go out and blow away anyone and everyone connected to this. Diane put him on the spot about it "John, I quite understand why Sarah, his wife, is so ready to go on a killing spree over this, but why are you so angry about this?"

Casey looked around the group, uncomfortable with the attention, and asked "Could we discuss this in private Ma'am? Please?", but Carina piped up.

"No! We all have a right to hear this!" Then she gave him one of the old Carina's sultry smiles. "If we don't hear your reasons Johnny, we'll have to make up our own, and you KNOW what sort of things I'll come up with!"

He looked horrified at the thought of that, because an image of leather bars had suddenly flashed through his head, even though the two of them had been together more than a few times in the past, and he blurted out. "Alright, I'll tell you, just stop talking, please!" He gathered himself and then began to speak.

"As you know, I've been attached to this family since ninety two…." The others nodded. "Most of that time I've been working with Chuck, and I've seen him grow from a brilliant and dedicated boy coming into manhood, into the best man I know, a great man. We've taken on what should have been insurmountable odds together time and again together, and won, and I've come to respect and admire him more than any other. More than that, I've come to love him like family, like a brother, a son, and anyone who tries to come after him will have to go through me first!"

Diane nodded musingly "Thank you John, I know that that must have been hard for you to share."

She paused "While you're opening up, would you care to share just what Ellie is to you?" She'd been wondering about this for some time, as the closeness and the looks she'd caught between the two of them raised questions.

He glared at the screen but she met his gaze, unrepentant, and he sighed in resignation before looking at the screen, defiant. "I love her, I admired the incredible young woman she was when we first met and she started coming to me to talk about the things she didn't want to talk to her mother or Aunt about and couldn't talk to anyone else about. You know how she was always wise beyond her years and growing up way too fast?" Diane nodded sadly as she thought about what Ellie had taken on her shoulders as a young girl. "We became friends, closer than I've ever been with anyone else, and a few years later we became more than friends sometimes. When she started at Westside, she met Woodcomb and got caught up in the excitement of a new romance, so we talked it over and agreed to just be friends again, but when she kicked the bastard out she came to me for comfort and things went back to where they were before him."

He turned to Chuck "You know that I respect and admire your sister…." but Chuck cut him off "I know John, you've always shown Ellie the utmost respect and treated her like a lady should be treated, unlike that other bastard. I also knew that she was the one who started things between you, because we discussed it at the time…." He grinned "She didn't think it prudent to talk to Mom about it because, well, Mom probably would have castrated you at the time." That got chuckles from most of them, including Diane, but he went on.

"She was far happier when her partner was the man who was her best friend, who she could discuss anything, except maybe the family secret, with. Woodcomb was more about the excitement and sex whenever she wanted it, because the two of you had been sneaking around behind Mom's back and only seeing each other in secret. She stayed with him out of some misplaced sense of obligation, but I believe that she also tried to convince herself that he was honest and honourable because she wanted to believe that he was like you, until he proved that he wasn't. In case you haven't noticed she's been a lot happier since you've been back together, so stop hiding what the two of you have, I want to see my sister happy. Don't worry, I'll handle Mom."

They were all quiet after that, and a few of them had tears in their eyes, but Diane brought the discussion back to the matter at hand, the pending termination order. It was agreed that Diane would work on the DNI and the President to try and ensure that any termination orders were squashed, using the team's track record to show the value of the Human Intersect. A reshuffle of the accommodation so that all of the best of the Shadow Security team were living on-site in the Castle was also agreed to beef up their defences. On top of that, they made plans to weaponise the building's security systems, making them active rather than passive. Chuck quickly drew up the plans while Diane quietly engaged the contractors for those parts of the job that they wouldn't be doing themselves and used a few layers of cover to requisition the extra armaments that were to be installed. In the meantime, the team started hunting for the cipher.

* * *

What they were finding when they were chasing the cipher was setting off alarm bells, as whenever they followed up a lead, the ones they found were nothing but second rate mercenaries or criminals, and they were suspicious about the fact that it was too easy. They reported this to Graham, but he angrily told them that their job was to find the cipher, not argue about conspiracy theories, so they just shrugged and went back to the hunt.

They had the Castle's defences upgraded within a week, even with doing things on the quiet as they were, so everything was in place by the time they located the cipher and sent it to D.C. a week later. It wasn't lost on anyone that the $850,000 bill was paid immediately and without question by Graham, and they got ready for a fight.

* * *

Langley - June 2008

Langston Graham was more excited than he could remember being when the cipher was delivered to him. He'd had his selected agents brought into D.C. in preparation for this a week ago and his technicians were geared up, ready to run the upload as soon as they had the opportunity, the cipher was the only thing they'd been waiting on. He was worried about what Beckman may try to pull to thwart his plans, because the pint sized bitch may have bested him once, but he was going to make damned sure that she didn't do it again! There wasn't a doubt in his mind that her team had been trying to stall him with that talk about it all being too easy, to give her more time to get things in place. That was why he set his plans in motion the moment he had word that the cipher was on its way.

His plan was simple, his people would take over the Intersect Facility at 0400. He gave them orders to subdue the NSA guards if possible to minimise the political backlash once the dust had settled, but stressed that they MUST be prevented from raising any alarms. Once the facility was under their control, his technicians would go in and set up everything for the upload, and he would be there at 0500 with his six selected agents to do the upload. He wouldn't normally have involved himself in something like this, but he couldn't deny himself the satisfaction of personally initiating the event which would trigger his inevitable victory. With his team of Intersect Agents taking the lead on the world's Intelligence events and Beckman's pathetic excuse of a Human Intersect eliminated, no-one could stop him! The fact that the Intersect code and databases would somehow be wiped out once his agents had been uploaded was just insurance to ensure that he had the only Intersect agents. Until he bought his place in the upper echelon of the Ring with the copy of the Intersect that his people had taken, anyway.

To make sure that he got the threat of Beckman and her team out of the way, as soon as he had the cipher in his hands, he contacted the ones he'd teed up to support the Human Intersect's termination order and advised them that the Intersect Computer was now operational (OK, that was jumping the gun a little but they didn't need to know that). That was enough to set things in motion, and the Director of the NSA received the termination order from the Vice President, supported by the National Security Advisor, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and two other four star generals.

At 0500, Graham went into the Intersect Room in the Intersect Facility and put on his safety glasses. He looked at the agents and angrily told them "Get those damned sunglasses off you idiots! Who do you think you are, Corey Hart?" After they'd hastily taken their sunglasses off and were looking suitably chastised, he turned back to the console and activated the upload, but when the message 'FULCRUM THANKS YOU.' flashed up on the screen, he only had time to get out "Oh Fu…." before a massive power surge fried nearly everything in the building. On the floor where the computer facilities and the Intersect Room were, absolutely everything was fried, including the fragile humans in the Intersect room and the control room, even the guards outside the Intersect room were electrocuted.

The fire systems in the Intersect Facility were heat activated rather than electrical, so they still triggered when the fires started up. After Larkin had blown up the last Intersect Facility, they'd implemented security systems at a level beyond any used in government facilities up to that point for the new facility, and one of the fail safes that they'd included was a 'heartbeat' signal that triggered alerts if it stopped, so the second that the building's electrical systems were fried, the alerts went out to everyone significant connected to the Intersect Project.

As soon as he got to the Intersect Facility and realised what had happened, the Director of the NSA grabbed his phone to try and prevent the termination order on the Human Intersect being executed, but they couldn't raise anyone on the strike team who'd been sent in.

* * *

Pasadena - June 2008

At 2 in the morning, Chuck, Sarah and most of the team were woken by alerts from the Castle's security systems, because the sensors were picking up incoming parachutists, obviously doing HALO jumps as there hadn't been any alerts of low flying aircraft, and also people trying to hack into the security systems on the doors at the ground floor. Everyone mobilised, with some of the shadow team heading for the roof garden and some going down and slipping out those doors that weren't being watched on the ground floor.

The NSA team on the ground had gotten frustrated by the fact that they couldn't override the security system and had decided that they'd have to blow the doors to get inside in the required timeframe, just as the HALO team landed on the roof, so Chuck keyed up the defensive systems at both ends. When they'd prepared the charge downstairs and were heading for the doors to set it, he triggered the defensive mechanism to fry the ones near the door, which in turn set off the charge they'd been planning to use on the door and it took out over half of the ground team when it was thrown back into the group by the man's arm jerking as he was electrocuted. While the survivors were trying to recover from that, they were easily taken by the shadow team who'd gone down to deal with them.

When the HALO team were all down and advancing on the Keep, Chuck lit up the area bright enough to melt their eyeballs, wearing night vision goggles as they were, and ordered them to lay down their weapons and surrender. They tried to shoot out the lights so he and Sarah put anyone shooting down, using the remote controlled AS VALs mounted around the garden. Then Chuck repeated the order while the shadow team that had gone to the roof closed in on them, the ones who were left did as they were told when they saw that.

* * *

Fort Meade - June 2008

As soon as they had the situation under control, Chuck called to warn Auntie Di. She was on her way to the Intersect Facility at the time, but she stopped and called for an FBI strike team to go in with her, she also called the DNI and advised him that the NSA had attempted to terminate the Human Intersect. He advised her that a SEAL team would be dusting off from Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek ASAP and should be at the Intersect Facility within the hour, hanging up to get that in play, but ten minutes later she and others heading for the Intersect Facility received an email authorising her to take charge of the situation at the Intersect Facility and arrest anyone she deemed necessary at the facility.

The only thing that saved the NSA Director was that he'd contacted Diane to get her to warn the Human Intersect team about the termination order as soon as they failed to contact the strike team to abort the operation, as that was evidence that he'd acted in good faith that the order had been legitimate. That didn't save him from all the repercussions of being involved in an unlawful termination order, as he had failed to confirm the order through the proper channels, but it did save him from the impeachment or dismissal that the others involved faced.

At the Intersect Facility, the CIA agents who were there trying to break into the building were arrested by the NSA teams who arrived on-site first, and Diane used the order from the DNI to prevent them being taken off-site. Once the SEAL team arrived, she had full control of the site. A few of the CIA guards had been killed when they started shooting when the NSA breached the building, but the others left alive had quickly surrendered and were arrested. Half of the NSA guards inside were still alive, but the rest had been killed when the CIA took over the building or they were electrocuted.

In the Intersect Room, the only thing that was left to tell them anything was Fulcrum's message, which had been burnt into the console's screen when the systems fried, but Diane ordered the remains of the cipher to be pried out and given to her so that she could get her specialists to examine it. She also took the storage media they'd found with the technicians for the same reason.

* * *

Back in Los Angeles, they secured the prisoners and called for the FBI to take them into custody, along with the bodies and their vehicles. Chuck also got into the FAA systems to get the details of the plane that dropped the HALO jumpers and organised a clean up crew for the mess downstairs.

Diane handed the remains of the cipher over to Stephen and Leslie to see whether they could extract anything from it, along with the storage media. They managed to get most of the code off the chips that hadn't been fried and sent it to Jeff to try and reverse engineer it, as he was their expert on the subject. When they went through the storage media, Stephen told her that this was the full intersect image, code and data. Meanwhile, Stephen examined the rest of the cipher and advised that it was a close copy of the last operational cipher, so it had almost certainly been copied off the original after it had been damaged in the explosion.

That was news that none of them wanted to hear, as that meant that the original cipher was out there, and if someone else had the designs for the Intersect computer, it may be used to create an operational Intersect Computer, so they needed to locate and recover it before it could be used for that purpose. In a rare instance of co-operation, the CIA reported chatter that they'd picked up, saying that an ex-KGB agent by the name of Sasha Banacheck was supposed to be delivering the cipher for Fulcrum. The CIA also shared that Banacheck was supposedly highly tolerant of torture and the only time they'd ever managed to get anything significant out of her was when one of their agents had managed to seduce it out of her.

They'd clammed up then, and when pressed for the identity of this agent they told Diane that he'd recently become semi-retired and had apparently gone off-grid as they couldn't find him. Diane stopped the story at that point, so Chuck asked "What's with the games Auntie Di? Did you find out who it was or not?"

She grinned then, saying, "Yes I did, it was Roan Montgomery!" When the laughter died down, Chuck asked when he was supposed to be arriving, and she said that he should be in later that day, so they settled down to try and locate Sasha Banacheck, to be ready to go when Uncle Roan was there to fill them in on her.

By then, Jeff had reverse engineered the code that Stephen and Leslie managed to extract from the chips on the cipher, and he reported that the majority of the code was focussed on locating and breaching any gateways into the SCADA and security systems from the computer network for the purpose of taking over the control and security systems to disable any alerts or alarms and trigger the power surge that had wiped everything at the facility. He'd located a few hacker tags in the code, but didn't recognise any of them, so he presumed that they were minor players, probably college students trying to make a bit of money. The childish message they put up on the screen appeared to support that idea. The fact that he didn't find anything remotely related to the Intersect in the code was a relief, but the original cipher could still contain valid code, so they needed to recover it.

* * *

Pasadena - July 2008

They located Banacheck in an L.A. hotel, and prepared for the mission while they waited for Roan, but Chuck was trying to work out how to broach a subject with Sarah that she wasn't going to be happy about, until she snapped at him. "Stop looking at me like that and pussy footing around the issue! I get it, OK? You're going to have to be the one who does this because Casey is apparently incapable of seducing anyone but my sister in law and my best friend! I'm just pissed off that my future brother in law can't take one for the team for once instead of my husband!" Casey spat his coffee across the conference table and Ellie (who'd returned from Irvine by then) stared at her, shocked. Sarah ignored Ellie as she rounded on Casey "What? Are you saying that my sister in law's good enough to sleep with but not marry? Is that what you're saying Casey?"

"Alright! I'll seduce Banacheck! Just stop talking! But don't you EVER try to say that I wouldn't marry Ellie if I had the chance!"

Roan spoke up from the doorway "Absolutely not! I'm referring to Miss Banacheck of course, not Eleanor, we'll get back to THAT later! John, there was a very good reason that I failed you twice in Seduction School, as the kids called it, it was because you always went into seduction as though it were a full frontal assault! It would appear…." Glancing at Ellie "That if you can manage to push aside Major Casey, Grunt Supreme, enough for the true John Casey to shine through, you CAN win the lady, but I have never seen you manage to exhibit anything remotely close to that in a mission capacity and quite frankly do not believe that it is possible. No, I'm afraid that you are correct Samantha, Charles will have to be the one who does this."

Sarah didn't look at all happy with that, even though she accepted that it was necessary, and suddenly turned on Chuck as she remembered something "And you owe me an explanation about Ibiza! Because from what HE said (hooking a thumb at Casey), there was a hell of a lot more going on there than you told me about!"

Chuck swore under his breath, and the look he shot Casey promised a sparring session that one of them wasn't going to enjoy at all, and there was no question who that was going to be. He turned to Sarah "OK, all the intel we had was that one of the girls at a particular party in Ibiza had the details of where we could find a biological weapons shipment before it went to the buyer, so I had to find out which one it was and get the location out of her. Most of them were only wearing bikini bottoms and they were just about all so far gone on a mixture of alcohol, ecstasy and other drugs that they could hardly remember their own names, which made extracting information from them a difficult task. They also wanted to get it on with anything with a pulse, so I think even Casey got lucky about half a dozen times, even though I was too busy trying to get the information that we were there for to have any fun."

Most of them snorted at that, though Ellie didn't seem to find it at all funny "When I eventually found the right girl, it took me almost half an hour to get the location out of her, she was so far gone, so the fact that they couldn't remember their own names or what I'd told them my name was had NOTHING to do with anything I was doing to them, because I wasn't doing any more than kissing and caressing them just enough to keep up the act, OK?"

When he went to stand and leave the room though, Sarah threw herself at him, crying and begging him to forgive her. Casey was looking down at the table so he didn't realise that Ellie was standing behind him until she slapped him in the back of the head hard enough to bounce his head off the table and almost knock him out, as it was, it left him sitting there more then a little dazed to say the least.

When the two couples had sorted things out, Chuck went over the background information on Banacheck with Roan and arranged for him to be in the van to answer any questions that may arise before he and Sarah went up to get ready. When they came back down, Sarah and Roan went in the van with some of the Shadow Security team. At the hotel, Casey was behind the bar, while Rick Noble and Carina, and Javier Cruz and Zondra were also in the bar as couples, while the rest of the Shadow Security team were in the room above Banacheck's.

* * *

Downtown L.A. - July 2008

Chuck, or rather Philipe Deveraux, came charging in in his black customised '07 SL 65 AMG, giving the valet a look that told him that he'd be dead if there was a single scratch on the car when he got it back, then headed for the bar. He ordered in French, and when Casey just looked blankly at him, swore at him quite eloquently in French, getting a low growl from Casey (who's knowledge of French was actually excellent) and a laugh from Banacheck. He repeated his order in English and snapped at him to hurry up, and by the time Casey had the drink made, Banacheck was standing beside him, trying to engage him.

Carina was whispering to Sarah over the mic that Chuckles was WAY too hot to be let off his leash in here among all these bitches in heat and Sarah managed a laugh for the first time since they started this "Yeah, I know Red, and if you know what's good for you, you'll find some other dog to go sniffing after. Maybe the one behind the bar?"

Carina turned serious for once "Come on Blondie, he's taken his lumps now, Ellie made sure of that!"

Sarah sighed "Yeah, I know Red, but he was winding me up with those stories about Ibiza when he knew damn well it wasn't anything like what he tried to make me believe, so I'm still a little pissed with him, OK?"

Casey piped up quietly "I think you more than paid me back with that crack about Ellie being good enough to sleep with but not marry, don't you?"

Chuck cleared his throat and they all shut up, after murmuring 'Sorry'.

With Roan feeding Chuck the information on which of Banacheck's buttons to push, by the time they finished their first drink, she was ready to drag 'Philipe' off to her room, and he let her. As soon as the door closed on her bodyguards, waiting outside, Chuck put her out with a nerve strike, sticking her with a tranq dart for good measure before calling the Shadow team down from upstairs. A few of them swung down onto the balcony from the one above, while the others came down in two separate groups to take the guards down from both sides. As soon as the guards were down, the shadow team dragged them into the room to get them out of sight.

It didn't take long for Chuck to flash on the cipher, as it was in the big pendant that Banacheck was wearing around her neck, but they took everything she had in the rooms anyway, and then carefully went through the rest of the suite to make sure that they hadn't missed anything. Then they took Banacheck, her guards and everything else they'd collected out via the rear stairs, while Philipe sauntered out the front with black lace panties hanging out of his pocket (clean ones from her bag, but they didn't know that).

When they brought the SL 65 AMG up for him, he went over it with a fine toothed comb before grudgingly conceding that it was fine and giving the valet a good tip. Taking off at a good clip, he didn't get far before he stopped though, because there was a blonde angel looking for a lift just around the corner. Their kiss when Sarah got into the car was as though they hadn't had a fairly major fight just a few hours before.

Chuck called Diane on the hands free before he took off again, explaining that Banacheck and her bodyguards were being taken to the FBI office until morning, and they'd pick her up and take her to the airport when the plane arrived to get her. He said that he didn't think that it was worth taking the bodyguards back east for processing, it was her call but he'd just give them to the FBI here.

When she asked about the cipher, he told her it looked damaged, they'd see about extracting the code and determining whether it was usable, in case it had already been copied by Fulcrum, but the official story was that it was damaged and unusable and had been destroyed to ensure that it didn't fall into the wrong hands, which he wanted to do anyway. Diane laughed at that "Have you forgotten that I've been doing this since before either of you were born Chuck?"

"Sorry Auntie Di, it's just been altogether a shit day."

She answered quietly "It sounds like you two are OK now?"

Chuck glanced at Sarah, getting a smile as she reached over to squeeze his hand. "Yeah, we're good Auntie Di."

"What about John and Ellie?"

"They'll be OK, I'll tell Ellie tonight that he didn't really sleep with those girls who were off their faces. I'm pretty sure that she already knows that I only said that because he'd pissed me off by creating the problem with his cracks, but I'll make sure."

"That's my boy, you've always been a good boy Honey. So, how's Ellie handling the fact that John's told everyone that he'd marry her if he had the chance?"

Sarah laughed "I think she's still in shock from when I first brought it up, but the idea didn't seem at all abhorrent to her."

Diane laughed as well "Don't forget Chuck, you still need to sort things out and make sure your mother doesn't castrate her future son in law for sleeping with her little girl, you promised!"

"Yeah, I will Auntie Di, we're just getting home, let us know what the arrangements are to be for Banacheck and her guards and we'll talk to you later."

"OK, night Chuck, night Sarah" After they'd chorused back "Night Auntie Di", Chuck cut the link.

As Casey was still dealing with the prisoners, they went to see Ellie and sort everything out first. That discussion didn't take long, because as he'd expected, she knew quite well that he was just saying that about John screwing those girls because he was pissed off with him, and that most of what Sarah said was for the same reason. Besides, She could see some benefit in the admission that Sarah got out of John when they were both pissed off.

With everything right between them, they headed upstairs to the Keep to get changed before heading back down to the dungeon to have the debriefing about the events of the night, and to lock the cipher away in the safe.

* * *

Over the next few days, things were fairly quiet, they delivered Banacheck to the airport to be taken back to D.C. for questioning, her guards were processed by the FBI's Los Angeles office, and Chuck extracted the code from the cipher for Jeff to reverse engineer. When he'd done so, they went over the code he'd come up with and sent a copy to Stephen and Leslie to do the same. They all agreed when they'd gone through the code that it was too damaged to work, as there were too many gaps for the processes to complete properly. With what code that could be extracted on their systems, Diane agreed for the cipher to be destroyed, and they recorded the process and sent a copy of the video to her.

While their business(es) were going strong and they had plenty of work to do there, their intelligence workload took a serious downturn after the events around the second destruction of the Intersect facility. For start, there was a great deal of infighting over who would be taking over from Graham as the Director of the CIA. While none of the team trusted Graham's recommendation as his successor, they didn't have any hard evidence against him, so there wasn't anything that they could do to stop it when he was instated as the Acting Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The best any of them could manage was for the DNI to get the President to put a hold on the Acting DCIA's confirmation process until after they'd seen what he'd do when he was in the job.

As far as the termination order for the Human Intersect that was pushed through outside of the proper channels went, it wasn't much better. The Director of the NSA willingly conceded that he hadn't completed his duties properly when he accepted the order from the Vice President instead of the President without seeking confirmation through the proper channels, and was very careful to stay on the straight and narrow after that. Unfortunately, while the Vice President and National Security Advisor were both impeached, the matter failed to get the two thirds majority vote in the Senate that was required to prosecute them, so they got off with little more than a slap on the wrist.

Their argument that Director Graham had presented very compelling evidence (conveniently without any documentation) to support the need to eliminate the risk to the country from the risks imposed by having a civilian running around with all the nation's secrets in his head and that they'd been led to believe that it was all above board had been enough to give them a get out of jail free card. The Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the other two generals weren't so lucky, because as with the Director of the NSA there were clear protocols to be followed, so while they tried to use all the same arguments as the politicians had, they were all dismissed from their services and lost the privileges associated with retiring as a four star general, though there wasn't enough evidence to push them down further than a two star general.

At least Diane got agreement that without the cipher required to make the Intersect Computer operational, there was no justification to waste the money that would be required to rebuild the Intersect Facility again. She was also confirmed as the sole Director of the Intersect Project, so she used the Intersect Project's remaining budgets to support the Human Intersect Project, though from that point it was only known as the Intersect Project. She kept a few of the key scientists and technicians who were working on maintenance and development of the parts of the project that applied to the Human Intersect and transferred the rest of the personnel elsewhere.

On the home front, Chuck went to talk his mother around about John, but she laughed at him and told him that she was rather disappointed that her children believed that she wouldn't have seen what was going on with her only daughter. She reminded him of what she'd said when they revealed their backgrounds to him, she could see that inside, John was a good man, and more to the point, she saw how he treated Ellie and how Ellie was when she was with him, so she didn't have a problem with them being together.


	10. Like Old Times

**Usual disclaimers, no rights to any characters portrayed, this isn't the real world and it's not a Disney Princess story.**

Pasadena - August 2008

Things were still quiet while the dust was settling after Graham, his people and the Intersect Facility got fried and those involved in pushing through the unlawful termination order were dealt with (well some of them were anyway), when Sarah got a call from Langley. She called for Chuck and they hit the button to shut and seal the doors before answering it on speaker. "Walker. Secure."

"Agent Walker, this is the Director Gordon. We have just discovered that a file of highly sensitive information has been stolen by Fulcrum and must be recovered as a matter of utmost urgency. Your new partner is on his way to Los Angeles. Your mission will be to accompany him to a function tomorrow evening and recover the information. You are to use any means necessary to recover this information from the man hosting this function, do you understand? After you complete this mission you will be returning to Langley with your partner as I am terminating your secondment to your current assignment. I do not know what Director Graham was thinking, an agent like yourself is wasted on something like that, but that will be rectified immediately."

"I'm afraid that I can't do that Director…."

"What do you mean you can't do that? Who the hell do you think you're talking to Walker? You're a CIA agent and you'll do whatever the fuck I tell you to do without question!"

'One moment please Director." She quickly conferenced Auntie Di in.

"Hello Sarah, is something wrong? I wasn't expecting to talk to you until later."

"General Beckman, I have the Acting Director of the CIA on the phone and he has advised me that he's recalling me from my current assignment and sending me on a mission with my new CIA partner. He has also advised me that I am to return to Langley with my new partner after this mission as he is terminating my involvement with the Intersect Project."

There was a silence for nearly a minute, which Diane needed to get herself under control before she spoke. "Director, you are apparently unaware of the terms of Agent Walker's assignment to the Intersect Project. If you have not been cleared to see the documentation for that I'm afraid that you will have to contact the Director of National Intelligence to request that he read you in. I suggest that you talk to the DNI about this but the short version is that Agent Walker has been permanently, irrevocably and exclusively assigned to the Intersect project and she can accept orders from me alone, she cannot being recalled or reassigned and she will not be completing any direct missions for the CIA, whether they be with any CIA agents or solo. If you wish to engage the Intersect team to complete this mission for you, the Director of the National Clandestine Service is quite aware of the terms and process, as she usually handled this for Director Graham."

From the sound of the Director's breathing, he was hyper ventilating as he worked himself up, so they were just waiting for the explosion. He didn't disappoint on that front.

"Who the fuck do you think you're talking to woman? Walker is CIA and she'll do whatever I fucking tell her to! As for you Beckman, clean out your desk because I'm going to make sure that you're thrown out on your arse before the day's through you stupid bitch!"

Diane took a breath "Very well Director, you'll have to talk to the President about that, because I only report to him and the DNI. In the meantime, do NOT try to contact any of my agents directly again! You may ONLY request our assistance through the proper channels like everyone else! Agent Walker, you are not to have any further direct discussions with the Acting Director of the CIA, is that understood?"

Sarah said "Yes Ma'am."

"Good, now please terminate this call."

Sarah repeated "Yes Ma'am" then cut the call without another word.

As expected, the screen lit up with a video call in seconds and Diane asked "Are you OK Honey?"

"Yes Auntie Di, it was unpleasant but nothing that I didn't have to deal with plenty of times over the past ten years."

"That's good, wait a moment, I want to conference in the DNI, and also the Director of the NSA briefly to warn him about the call he's about to get." They nodded as she did that.

When the two men came up on screen, she jumped into it "General, I expect that you're about to get a phone call from the Acting Director of the CIA, demanding that you fire my arse because I just informed him that under the terms of Agent Walker's assignment to the Intersect Project, she could not take any orders or accept assignments from him, and that he couldn't recall her from the project. I'm afraid that that call is most likely to be abusive."

He nodded "What am I allowed to tell him?…." Just then his desk phone started ringing and the DNI piped up "Answer it on speaker please General, I'll handle anything sensitive."

He nodded again and did as he was told "Yes?"

"Just what sort of half arsed operation are you running over there General?"

"Who is this?"

"This is the Director of the Fucking CIA! And one of your jumped up little bitches just had the nerve to try and tell ME that I couldn't do what I liked with MY fucking agents and then had her terminate my call!"

"From what I understand Director, General Beckman was correct in what she informed you."

"What, is that fucking bitch there with you now?"

"No Director, but she called me to warn me to expect your call. I would strongly advise that you do not attempt to take this matter any further, as that would not go well for you!"

Gordon sneered at him "I can see that you're as whipped as people say you are, General. Well you may be afraid of some skirt getting her panties in a twist but I can assure you that I'm NOT!" With that, he obviously slammed the phone down from the crash that they heard over the line.

The Director or the NSA cut the link and grimaced "Well, that was unpleasant!"

Diane said "I'm sorry about that General…." but he cut her off.

"No General, it wasn't your fault, it was..." He shuddered and then looked at the screen showing the DNI "How do you want me to handle this if he tries to follow this up Sir?"

"Just refer him to me General, you obviously won't be firing General Beckman or any of her people, and at the moment I'm not seeing much probability of the Acting Director's tenure being long enough to justify giving him any serious information about the Intersect Project or how it's handled. Quite frankly, I can't understand how he's managed to rise as high as he has with behaviour like that. I believe that I'll enjoy explaining to him in terms that he can understand, exactly how he will behave in regard to the Intersect project from this point on."

He looked at Diane and Sarah on screen "Agent Walker, General Beckman, I expect that your earlier communication with the ACTING Director was even less pleasant?" When Diane nodded, he went on "I apologise for that, you shouldn't have to take that. I don't suppose that you'd have a recording of that discussion would you?"

He could see that Diane was looking at Sarah and Chuck's image and he did as well. He saw the couple share a look and then Agent Walker said "Yes Sir, all calls on our phones here are recorded, we can upload it to the computer and forward it to you."

"If you could, that would be appreciated, I trust that there is nothing included that was private to you or the General?"

She shook her head "No Sir." He nodded "While we're on a roll, I don't suppose you'd have a recording of this discussion as well would you? I heard what he said but it would be good to be able to be able to use the exact words that were said when we deal with this."

"No Sir, but we can provide you with a transcript of the discussion if you'd like?"

He looked a little stunned at that, so Diane said "Both Agent Walker and Mister Bartowski have eidetic memories Director, so they can provide an exact transcript of what was said."

That confused him "Was I ever told that?"

Chuck piped up and said "Yes, a few times now Mister Mike" with a grin, but realised what he'd let slip when the DNI froze, as that had been what he'd been called in certain sensitive areas of the NSA, back when he was the Director of the NSA in the early nineties, but he hadn't been called that since then. The problem was that it had suddenly brought together the numerous other small things that had been tugging at his memory since this business started, including why Mr Bartowski's current cover identity was so familiar, as he now remembered another Charles Carmichael who'd worked for the NSA in that period. He was staring at Chuck's image as he asked quietly "General Beckman, if you could make the time, it would be appreciated if we could have a talk later."

She just nodded and said "Yes Sir, I'll head over once we finish this call."

With that, they wound up the video-conference and Sarah transcribed the discussion while Chuck got the recording off her phone, then they sent both to both Auntie Di and the DNI.

Once that was done, Sarah turned to Chuck and asked what had just happened?

He hung his head. "I screwed up, only people in the high clearance areas of the NSA when he was the Director from ninety two to ninety six ever called him Mister Mike. Auntie Di either has to try and convince him that she let it slip to me, or tell him the truth. The fact that I was working for them as an NSA analyst, Navy Lieutenant junior grade Charles Carmichael, at the time and dealt with him fairly often just adds to the problem as he's likely to remember the name."

* * *

Washington - July 2008

In Washington, Diane went straight to the DNI's office, and he asked her to take a seat, securing the office and activating electronic counter measures, but when he went to speak she held up her hand to stop him and pulled out a couple of devices that Stephen, Chuck and now Leslie had provided which were far more advanced and effective than what the DNI was able to get his hands on. Once they were activated and telling her that they were in fact secure she said "Yes, Sir?"

"This is more of a 'Mike' discussion Diane, after all you've been pretty much part of the family to me and Terry for over thirty years now, and I'm not sure that what I'm thinking at the moment isn't enough to rate sending me to the funny farm."

He looked at her for a moment and then asked her straight "Is Mister Bartowski really the same Charles Carmichael that you had working for you sixteen years ago?"

"Yes Mike, he is."

"How is that possible?"

"He, and his whole family for that matter, are brilliant. His parents and their best friend defected when the KGB disbanded and I managed to create a group on the quiet that was mainly made up of them, the original Special Projects Group. Even though they were still children at the time, Chuck and his older sister Ellie were working with their mother and her best friend from the very start, and you know as well as I do the value of what that group has done for us over the past sixteen years."

He nodded slowly "Why did you make all that up about him being a borderline basket case when he got the Intersect?"

"We had to get his mother's best friend's daughter out of Graham's clutches, and that was the only thing that Chuck could come up with that would be enough to sway you and the President at the time."

"Are you telling me HE did all that? Wait, are you telling me that Agent Walker's mother is the other woman in your Special Projects Group?"

"Yes, and yes, we'd been trying to find Samantha ever since her father took her away in nineteen eighty nine, so you can imagine what a shock it was when she just walked into Chuck's business on a mission for Graham a bit over a year ago. They grew up together and they were literally childhood sweethearts, he didn't stop looking for her since the day she was taken away, well none of us did, but I'm not sure that even her own mother was any more dedicated than Chuck was to find her."

"But why would Mr Bartowski, Chuck, fabricate such a dysfunctional life story and make himself look so weak and pathetic? The President and I pretty much felt that we had to throw the sad sack a bone to stop him crawling into a hole and giving up."

Diane nodded "Exactly! He created a case that made the two of you believe that he'd fall apart if we didn't ensure that Agent Walker never left, and furthermore she was never involved in the type of missions that Graham and other parts of the CIA seemed to love to make female agents do. So, to ensure that we kept access to the Intersect Database, you and the President pushed everything necessary through to protect Agent Walker and the rest of the team from anything of that nature."

He was getting angry now. "So you're telling me that he played me, the President and the rest of the American government for fools, just to make us do what he wanted?"

"Not exactly Mike, if you hadn't ensured those conditions were in place for them, Chuck, Sarah and the rest of the family, and probably Major Casey too I now realise, would have disappeared and you would never have seen any of them again. That family represents the best minds in the intelligence world, period, and you've seen plenty of proof of that! So if you hadn't done what you did, you WOULD have lost any access to the Intersect Data. Just between you and me though, if that ever does happen, never send anyone after them that you want to get back. Do you remember how good John Casey is?"

The DNI nodded, looking a little worried about where this was going.

"Mister Bartowski, his mother, his sister and Agent Walker are all far better than Major Casey, and there may be others in their group who are better as well, but even if there aren't any more who are actually better than him, they definitely have quite a few more who are almost as good. So if you want to take that family on, prepare to go to war. As you've seen, the NSA already found that out for themselves when they went after them."

She took in his reaction to what she was telling him.

"It doesn't need to get to that though Mike, as you've seen yourself, this family has been diligently working for the nation's interests for over sixteen years now, and they've been more effective and done more than just about everyone else. As long as the nation doesn't do anything to threaten the ones that they love, they will continue to do so. That being said, things like what Graham did, termination orders against any of them and what we had today with the Acting DCIA, are things that I can assure you they WILL regard as threatening the ones they love, and if those threats aren't stopped, well you definitely won't want to see what happens, because you could end up seeing American cities looking like war zones."

His worry had turned to outright fear now, so they talked for a while longer about the fact that they'd all shown that they were dedicated to working for the good of the nation and that they were fighting FOR America, rather than fighting against America, many times.

When the discussion was finished, Diane went back to her office and called Chuck. The first thing he said was "How much have I screwed things up Auntie Di?"

"I don't think that you have Honey, calling him Mister Mike just provided the final trigger to let him to put the things he'd been wondering about for a while together."

"How much did you tell him?"

"Pretty much everything, of course I only mentioned your parents and Emma as being ex-KGB, but I pointed out that the government had sixteen years of proof of your loyalty and contribution to the nation and told him that if anyone tried to come after the family, they'd probably be looking at American cities becoming war zones, which scared him after I told him just how good you guys are."

They all packed it in at that, but the next morning they got another nasty surprise.

* * *

Pasadena - August 2008

A little while after the Shadow Security office opened the next morning, a man came into Casey's reception area and tried to chat up Alex. Casey was ready to come out and pound him by the time he got around to what he was after.

"I need to see Sarah Walker."

Alex looked at him "I'm afraid that we don't have anyone of that name at Shadow Security Sir."

The look he gave her then was more patronising than lascivious, which she found she much preferred.

"Listen Sweetheart, I know Sarah's here because she told me to meet her here to work out the details for our date tonight, so why don't you just call her for me. Tell you what, if you're a good girl, I'll pick you up after I finish with her and we can have some fun…."

Whatever else he was planning to say was cut off as Casey burst out of his office and took him by the throat.

Alex barked an order at her father "Dad, No! You can't kill him, not yet any way."

Casey didn't like that much but reluctantly conceded that she was right, and relaxed his grip on the man's throat, slightly, as he bit out. "Get Sarah and the others to meet me in the bunker ASAP."

Alex nodded "Right, now remember, no killing yet!"

The only reply she got was "We'll see!" as he dragged the man into his office.

Carina and Zondra were the first to arrive in the bunker, as they were in the same building, and seeing two beauties of their calibre saunter in, the idiot immediately started preening and attempted to be charming.

Sarah and Chuck arrived together five minutes later, dressed rather more expensively, as befitted a couple who owned and ran a very successful business together and he broke off trying to chat up Carina and Zondra to focus on Sarah.

The intruder was too tied up in leering at Sarah and obviously celebrating his luck for being partnered to a hottie like this to even notice Chuck for a while, but when he did, he spat out "Bartowski? What the hell are you doing here?"

Chuck tried to stay calm as he responded "I'm where I'm supposed to be Watterman, the question is what are YOU doing here?"

Watterman leered at Sarah again as he said "I'm here to get my partner to take her back to where she belongs."

Chuck stopped Sarah with a gentle squeeze of her hand as she began to move forward to attack the tool. It took her a little while to get herself under control, but she squeezed his hand back and gave him a grateful smile when she did. Chuck looked at Casey and he nodded, initiating a video link to Diane.

As the link came up, she was saying "John? I wasn't expecting to hear from you, is this about…." She stopped when she saw Watterman sitting at the conference table and her eyes narrowed in anger "Who is that and what are they doing there?"

Chuck responded "His name is Allan Watterman General, and I presume that he's CIA as he came in here saying that he's come to get Agent Walker, his partner, to take her back to where she belongs."

She didn't bother trying to cover up her anger this time "I thought that we made it quite clear to that idiot yesterday! Wait a moment."

After a bit of quick work on the keyboard, the screen split to show the DNI as well "Hello Diane, what….Who is that?"

Chuck repeated what he'd just said to Auntie Di and the DNI sighed in resignation. "General, can you connect that idiot into this so that we can deal with him once and for all please?"

Diane said "Of course, Sir" and after a little more keying a third screen popped up, showing the Acting DCIA. As soon as he saw her he started "Beckman? What the hell do you think you're…." He cut off abruptly when he realised that the DNI was there as well.

The DNI didn't look happy as he said "I believe that you know who I am, DIRECTOR?"

Gordon said "Of course Sir!", while obviously thinking 'What the hell have I gotten myself into here?'

The DNI went on "I was under the impression that between the General and the Director of the NSA, they had managed to explain the situation to you yesterday Director, but I apparently overestimated your comprehension capabilities, so obviously I will now have to spell it out to you…."

Diane interrupted him "I'm sorry Sir, but don't you think we should have Major Casey take Mister Watterman elsewhere before you go into this any further?"

"No, you're quite right General. Major Casey, if you could remove Mister Watterman from the room while we discuss this, it would be appreciated."

Casey said "Of course Sir" and went to stand up, but Chuck cut in.

"Excuse me Sir, but wouldn't it be better if Major Casey and the rest of the agents stayed for this discussion while I escorted Mister Watterman from the room?"

Diane looked confused at that until Chuck added "There was also an issue involving Mister Watterman and Major Casey's assistant earlier which may create difficulties."

Her eyes went wide in what would be best described as a horrified expression at that and she quickly said "Yes Mister Bartowski, that would be best, thank you."

Watterman didn't know who that guy was, so he went to argue, until Chuck dug into a nerve point as he grabbed his shoulder, putting him into too much pain to do any more than stumble along with him as Chuck dragged him from his seat to steer him out the door and into another meeting room, sealing the door there before he dumped him into a chair and moved away as he pulled out his phone to send Watterman's salient details through to Auntie Di.

* * *

Back in the other meeting room, DNI was wading into the Acting DCIA. "Director, I am having trouble understanding why you were apparently unable to comprehend what you were advised of yesterday, because as the…." He made a show of reading what was in front of him 'Director of the Fucking CIA', I would have expected your comprehension skills to be right up there, but I've heard both General Beckman and the Director of the NSA explaining the process that must be followed to you, and still you sent…." He was interrupted by the text from Chuck that Diane had just forwarded to him and snorted in derision as he read it "Mister Watterman to the highly secret operational base of another organisation to demand that he see someone who didn't even work at that cover business? Explain this to me please?"

"To the best of my knowledge, neither General Beckman or the Director of the NSA have any authority over any part of CIA operations Sir."

"There's your core problem right there Director, because as you've already been told, nothing to do with any part of the Intersect team is a CIA operation. Quite aside from that, both General Beckman and the Director of the NSA have been highly respected members of the U.S. Intelligence community since the nineteen seventies, and I know for a fact that General Beckman advised you to contact me yesterday and the Director of the NSA confirmed her advice, why didn't you?"

"With all due respect Sir, I do not take orders from those below me."

The DNI took a moment to try and get control of himself before he responded. "No-one, at any point, ORDERED you to do anything, DIRECTOR, in fact the only person who was attempting to throw his weight about in areas where he had no authority was YOU! And you better watch your tone and be careful about who you're referring to as being below you if you know what's good for you. As I said, both General Beckman and the Director have been known and respected in the American Intelligence community since the nineteen seventies, and that's rather more than I can say for you!"

He was quiet for a moment as he gathered himself "I will say this once Gordon, so listen up. As General Beckman advised you yesterday, Agent Walker was irrevocably transferred to the Intersect Project under direct orders from the President at its inception. She is no longer under the control of the CIA and she will not accept any orders or assignments from the CIA. She accepts orders ONLY from General Beckman, who in turn ONLY accepts orders from the President or myself, so I better not hear of you ever trying to give orders to anyone on the Intersect team again! The ONLY connection that Agent Walker has to the CIA is that she has retained her identity and authority as a CIA agent, just as the other agents in the Intersect Team have retained their identities with the agencies that they were transferred from. These rights are irrevocable, just like their transfers. Do you understand me Gordon?"

The Acting DCIA responded through gritted teeth "Yes, Sir."

"So we will NEVER have to deal with another incident of this nature from the CIA, will we?"

"No, Sir."

"Now tell us what this mission that you decided that you needed Agent Walker for is."

"I don't believe that this should be discussed in front of non-CIA people, Sir."

"This is the best team we have, and if it's as important as you told Agent Walker it is, it needs to be addressed as a matter or priority, now out with it."

"Are you telling me that Agent Walker has shared details of a classified discussion with her superior?"

"How many times do I have to tell you this Gordon? NO! I'm telling you that Agent Walker shared details of an unauthorised contact that should never have been made to her WITH her superiors, General Beckman and myself, who are both cleared far higher than you are by the way, as are the rest of this team, now give me the details of this damned mission!"

Gordon made an effort to control his temper and began "A deep cover agent we have inside Fulcrum got word to us that Fulcrum have managed to steal a storage chip that has an encrypted database of highly sensitive information on it. Supposedly included in this database are the identities of all of our deep cover operatives..."

The DNI cut him off at that point "Wait a minute, when you say 'all of our deep cover operatives', are you referring specifically to the CIA's deep cover operatives, or what?"

"No Sir, it's apparently every deep cover operative in the American Intelligence community…."

"WHAT? You knew that this type of information was already in Fulcrum's hands and failed to report it out of some territorial bullshit? That's criminal, if not treason, Director and if they do manage to get access to it, your's will be the first head to roll, I can assure you of that! General, can we get Mister Bartowski back in please, we need to recover that information right now! Gordon, send all the information about this to General Beckman immediately so that we can get the Intersect team in there!"

Carina ducked out to get Chuck as Gordon tried to argue "Sir, something this important needs to be handled by competent spies, that's why I sent my best agent to be partnered with Walker..."

The DNI snorted "Best agent? Watterman is your best agent? If he's the best the CIA has to offer you may as well give up now, Watterman is a joke, no, we will be using the best we have, the Intersect team!"

Carina and Chuck came back in, with Watterman in tow as the DCIA was saying "Who have you got there to partner with Walker for a mission like this Sir? Major Casey? Everyone would see through that in an instant, the only agent that you have in Los Angeles who is capable of doing this is Agent Watterman."

Against her better judgement, Diane answered him. "Not that we answer to you, 'Director', but Agent Walker will be working with Mister Bartowski, using their established cover of the Carmichaels."

Watterman snorted in derision "Bartowski? He's a broken down computer repairman who fell apart after he got kicked out of Stanford for cheating, no, you need a real spy for a mission like this, me!"

Casey turned on him "Shut up you pathetic piece of shit, Bartowski's ten times the spy you could ever be!"

Watterman sneered at him. "What, are you still pissed because I was stealing your toy for the night Casey? Alright, I'll let you have her back, I've found something much better now anyway." He finished by smiling lasciviously at Sarah and giving her a look that he probably believed was enticing.

Chuck stepped up to stop Casey as he lunged at the tool while Carina and Zondra did the same with Sarah and Diane quickly texted just WHO Major Casey's assistant was to the DNI. When he read what was on the phone's screen he looked up in horror "No?" When Diane nodded grimly his face hardened and he said "Get that idiot out of there! Watterman, if they ever find you near the Intersect Team's base or cover business, or anyone associated with that team or cover business again, or you say ANYTHING about that team at all to ANYONE, the team is authorised to shoot to kill, do you understand?"

Watterman stared at the screen, wondering what just happened, so the DNI repeated his question "DO YOU UNDERSTAND?" and he nodded, gulping "Yes, Sir!"

At that, the DNI asked "Could you get him out of there please Mister Bartowski?"

Chuck said "Yes, Sir" and grabbed Watterman in the same place he had before, frog marching him out of the room, bunker and building, to give him a push that all but threw him across the side walk to land on his car (which he'd parked right in front of the door) hard enough to make a nasty dent.

* * *

As Chuck came back into the room, the DNI was asking Diane "Do you have the information for the mission yet General?" When she shook her head and said "No Sir", he looked at the Acting DNI's image "Gordon! I told you to send all the information to General Beckman over ten minutes ago, if she doesn't have it within the next minute you'll be sitting in the worst black site I can find until we decide what to prosecute you on!"

She got it just inside the deadline and put it up on screen. As Chuck was looking at the data that was listed as being included he asked "When and where was this stolen?"

Gordon wasn't going to answer until the DNI barked "You were asked a question!" and he grudgingly said "Some facility in Fort Meade a bit before Director Graham was killed."

The DNI asked "What is it Mister Bartowski?" Chuck glanced at the Acting DCIA "It appears to be an update to the data for, you know, Sir, so it would appear that there's more to this than we've been told."

"Is that correct Director? Are you still trying to withhold information from us about this? I told you to send ALL the information to General Beckman! Sent the ENTIRE file to her RIGHT NOW unless you want a troop of men like Major Casey to be kicking in your door to drag you out, screaming like a little girl, inside the hour!"

Inside a minute, Diane got a much bigger file and she went white as she saw the rest of the information. When she put it up in place of the earlier information, most of them swore when they saw how much the the scope had increased, and how long the CIA had been sitting on it, the DNI included.

He grimly said "Don't try to leave town Director, I can assure you that it will go much worse on you if we have to track you down!" then looked at Diane's image and said "General?", nodding at Gordon's image. She nodded and cut the link to him.

The DNI sighed "This is bad, we HAVE to recover that information and any copies that may have been made before Fulcrum or anyone else gets their hands on it. Can you get into that function tonight?"

Carina piped up "The Carmichaels and their friends now have invitations Sir, so we'll have three couples in there."

Zondra spoke next "We're also working on slipping a few more of our people into the serving staff, so we should have enough coverage Sir."

Sarah took over then "Chuck and I will take the lead Sir, we'll try to get away to find the chip and any copies of the data. If there's too much attention on us though, one of the other teams will have to go after it, but that will probably require a follow up visit to make sure that they haven't missed anything, given that Chuck is both the Intersect and our best computer expert."

The DNI nodded tiredly, "I'll leave you to it, Godspeed….And by the way Chuck, when this is over, I'd like to see you in Washington for a discussion about recent developments."

Chuck just met his gaze, saying "Yes, Sir" before the DNI cut his link.

* * *

Hollywood Hills - August 2008

When they started circulating at the function, which was a birthday party that the one Fulcrum hired to break the encryption on the files was throwing for himself, Chuck and Sarah ran into a lot of people who knew the Carmichaels from the society circles and they spent a little while mingling, but the Carmichaels had already established the fact that they avoided PDAs, so no-one was at all surprised when they slipped away out of sight after they started nuzzling each other. Between the nine of them inside the function, they'd attached numerous remote access devices to the computer and security networks and Anna and the other techs out in the van had taken over the systems. This meant that as far as the security cameras went, Chuck and Sarah were effectively invisible, and they talked them past any guards roaming the mansion as well.

They got into the host's office and vault, but while they found quite a bit of incriminating material and humongous amounts of cash and bearer bonds, they couldn't find the chip. Chuck hacked his way into the systems and found that the decryption processes were still running, and everything he located on the system relating to the files was luckily still encrypted. That was a relief, so with that they locked everything up again and went back to the party to find the chip, stopping for a make out session when they were back in a 'safe' area to explain what they'd been doing, and because they wanted to to tell the truth.

They were back on the dance floor and working their way closer to the host when Chuck snorted. Sarah just looked at him, waiting for him to tell her, them, what he'd discovered. As they were dancing cheek to cheek he spoke softly in her ear "Are you still as good a pick pocket as you were when you were with your father?"

"Pretty much, yeah, why?"

"Because our host just dropped his keys and I flashed on the key fob as he was picking them up, the chip that we're after is in his key fob. If I keep him occupied for long enough can you get his keys and either get the chip out of the key fob or take the key fob without him noticing?"

"I can take the key fob and have his keys back in his pocket inside a few minutes, no problem, but getting the chip out would take longer, I really have no idea how long that might take. Couldn't we just swap the key fob so he wouldn't notice?"

"Maybe, do any of you guys have key fobs on your keys? If so, can you hold them up so that I can compare them to his please?"

Over the next five minutes, the ones that did engineered situations to show him their key fobs and Chuck said "Carina, your's is pretty close to his, can you get it off the key ring and hand it off to Sarah when we bump into you please?"

"Sure thing Chuckie, just give me a minute…." With that she dropped her clutch and got down to pick up everything, and the next time the two couples bumped into each other she handed the fob off to Sarah.

They finished the next dance near the birthday boy and Sarah bumped past him to grab something for them to eat while Chuck was wishing him happy birthday, slipping the keys back into his pocket as she touched his arm to steal her husband away to have a nibble before they got back on the dance floor.

Of course they still had to wipe out everything on the systems and ensure that he didn't have any other copies of the files anywhere else, but they did feel a little better with the chip in their possession.

Their relief was short lived, as Jeff suddenly swore "That CIA agent who was at Shadow today, he's here!"

Casey cut in "Where is he?" But just as Chuck was telling him to let it go, Anna said "Don't worry about him, the host is leaving with a woman, and from his expression it's not for happy time."

Chuck asked "Where?" "Heading for the door in the back corner." Chuck got a good look at her and flashed "She's Fulcrum, she must be here to get the decrypted files. This could be good, if we can grab her to see what we can get out of her and grab him as well."

Jeff piped up "It looks like Wattawatta might have had the same idea, he's just ducked out through the foyer to cut them off."

Chuck nodded to himself "Right, we'll get behind him while someone else follows the others" and with that he and Sarah wafted across the dance floor and through the foyer deceptively quickly while Casey and Carina headed after the other pair.

They got the rear hall as the pair were coming down the hall with the Fulcrum agent berating him about the fact that he'd promised to have the information on the chip decrypted for them two weeks ago, so what was he doing throwing a party?

The man tried to be suave, but he just came across as a tool, at least he was bright enough to realise that though and he changed tacks to ask about his fee. At that moment, Watterman stepped out, pointing a pistol at him and saying. "You're going to open your vault for me and get me that chip!"

The Fulcrum agent stepped out from behind the host (hiding something behind her purse) and asked "What are you doing here Allan?" He smirked at her "Juliette! This is perfect, now I'll bring in the grand slam, the chip, him, and a senior Fulcrum operative. This will show those bastards who the real spy is!"

She smirked back at him, saying "Oh yes it will Allan!" as she quickly swept up the suppressed pistol that she'd been hiding to shoot him right between the eyes. The host was standing there, frozen in fear, as she turned back to him, but Casey quickly stepped forward to knock her out cold, muttering "Dammit, I wanted to be the one who killed that bastard, nice shot though!"

Chuck and Sarah ran up to them, Sarah checked Watterman and smiled grimly at how definitively the Fulcrum agent had dealt with the bastard as she picked up his pistol while Chuck scooped up the pistol that Juliette had dropped. Chuck grabbed the key fob that Sarah had slipped into his pocket and held it up, asking the host whether there were any other copies of the files on this?

He tried to bluff it out until Chuck pressed the still warm tip of the suppressor to the same spot as Watterman had been shot and repeated the question "Yes, yes, they're on my computer, I'll show you!" Chuck shook his head "Are there any other copies OTHER than what's on your system at the moment?"

"No, they're the only copies, I swear!"

"What about backups, or off-site backups?"

"The backups are all in the storage silo or my vault, I keep everything in-house for security."

Chuck called Vinnie and Zondra to come help and Casey and Vinnie carried Watterman's body and the Fulcrum agent out to the van while Carina and Zondra escorted the host and Chuck and Sarah headed back to his office. As before, Anna and the others kept them from showing up on the security monitors and talked them past the guards. Sarah opened and emptied the vault and desk while Chuck got into the computer, killing off all of the decryption processes and deleting anything on the system remotely related to the files before telling Anna to disconnect from the systems and releasing a rather nasty version of malware onto the network to corrupt and destroy absolutely every file attached to any of the systems.

The others came in with bags to cart everything that they'd collected out, and Casey brought them a rather large bag of thermite charges, along with their weapons and a couple of ballistic vests, just in case they had to shoot their way out of there. When they'd finished in the office, they headed to the computer room with Casey. They tranqed the sysadmins who were running around trying to save the systems and dragged them out of the computer room, then Chuck and Casey quickly went through and attached thermite charges to every processing and storage device in there, as well as the storage media. Sarah was both amazed and amused by how well they worked together as she watched them, it was like a practised dance, they never got in each other's way and always seemed to have what the other one wanted ready at the right time. She shook her head, thinking that this must be the result of working together closely for sixteen years.

Chuck smiled evilly as he activated the remote detonator to turn nearly a million dollars worth of state of the art computer processor and storage hardware and media into piles of worthless metal and plastic slag, then they headed out. As soon as they were clear of the building, Anna destroyed the security systems, much as Chuck had done to the computer systems (minus the thermite charges), after they'd copied everything off the systems, ensuring that there was no real possibility of recovering any images of any of them from the system.

* * *

The others left straight away with the van to deliver the host, the Fulcrum agent and Watterman's body into custody at the local FBI office, so they piled into the stretch limo with the other three who'd been inside as serving staff and headed back to the Castle. They had to laugh when they got there, as Carina and Zondra were sitting outside in a Lamborghini (presumably the host's), waiting for someone to let them in. Once they were all inside, they got the story out of them. Carina had gone to recover her key fob from his keys because it had sentimental value to her, but when she saw the Lamborghini key she decided that it would be a shame to let a nice car to go to waste, especially as she just happened to know people who could alter all the records so that it would show up as being her's, so she and Zondra hopped in and drove it home. They were happy to report that it was one sweet ride.

Once they were changed, they all headed down to the Dungeon to contact Diane and the DNI to report on the mission. Overall, everyone was happy with the outcome, as they'd recovered all the data before it could be leaked, as well as capturing a Fulcrum agent and the one who had been decrypting the files for them, so they were hoping to be able to get quite a bit of information out of the two of them. They didn't exactly regard Watterman getting killed as a win, but they weren't too broken up about it either. He wasn't supposed to be there at all and it was the way that he'd foolishly tried to confront the host on his own with no plan in a vain grab for glory that got him killed, so they couldn't be blamed for that.

Of course Diane and the DNI advised them that Gordon DID blame them for Watterman's death, and that he had even gone so far as to accuse them of killing him and doctoring the video that he was shown of the shooting when they contacted him right after they got off the link to Los Angeles. The DNI told them that he'd asked why Watterman hadn't been recalled after the meeting at the Intersect team's base and Gordon had told him that he didn't think that it was necessary to do so. They said that they'd offered to supply copies of the videos for analysis to prove that no tampering had occurred, but the man just kept ranting and making accusations, so they gave up.

The DNI did request that the team look into the Acting Director of the CIA's history, to find out how the hell someone like that could ever end up in a position like that. It didn't take them long to get to the bottom of the matter, Graham had been grooming the man, promoting him above his ability and covering up all of his discretions and messes for over twenty years to ensure that he had a puppet who had neither the intelligence or willpower to question what he was doing. Knowing Graham he would have made sure that he had backups for this one, but the plan was obvious when anyone looked at it, to ensure that he had a puppet who wouldn't ask questions between him and everyone else so that he could do what he wanted without anyone seeing what he was doing.


	11. Normal Families

**As far as I can see I'm down to one person interested in this story, if that, so it appears that it's bombed. If no-one's bothering to read it, it looks like it's time to give up, say 'sayonara Joe' and just leave the sheep to the type of crap that they rave about.**

 **Oh joy, Stalker Boi/M/Marc/Not Mark is back, still hiding behind 'anonymous reviews', of course. I find it amazing that this troll has the time to go through the stories of all the writers who he doesn't agree with and attack them, because we don't agree with him. Let's try this again, shall we Ma..? What you post as an anonymous coward will be deleted, if you want to say something, man up and identify yourself, but I'm betting you'll never say those things when people can see who you are.  
**

 **Parts of this are less pleasant.**

 **Usual disclaimers, no rights to any characters portrayed, this isn't the real world and it's not a Disney Princess story.**

Pasadena - August 2008

They were getting sick of dealing with politicians, because the bastards always had agendas. Even with how catastrophic it would have been if Fulcrum had gotten their hands on the decrypted versions of those files because Gordon had sat on the fact that they'd managed to steal the encrypted chip in an attempt to stop anyone else moving into what he saw as his territory, and with the DNI's VERY strong recommendations to get rid of him before the trouble he caused became even more serious, the politicians wouldn't vote to remove him. Because the President was a politician himself, he wasn't prepared to go out on a limb and use his power to force the issue, even though he knew that the DNI was right on this matter.

At least they didn't have to actually deal with Gordon though, as he WAS at least bright enough to know that he wasn't likely to get away with going head to head with the DNI too many times. He knew that someone had pulled his chestnuts out of the fire that time for some reason, but he didn't know whether they'd do it again, so he kept his head down and had the Director of the National Clandestine Service deal with the Intersect team if they had anything that was critical enough to need their assistance. Gordon did wish that he could afford to get rid of Bentley, though he doubted whether he could, because the woman didn't make much of an attempt to cover up her opinion of him and his competence for the job, but she was possibly the most effective Director that they'd ever had for the operational side of the CIA, and she was pretty much the main thing that was keeping the CIA working as an effective organisation.

* * *

Carina was enjoying her Lamborghini, which all the records now showed had been hers for years, and in addition to the intel that they took from the vault at the party, the cash and negotiable assets that they'd collected were worth over forty million, which was enough to fund the entire team's operations for a while, at least. They'd also transferred ownership of the man's G550 and most of his ill gotten gains over to Carmichael Industries, as he wouldn't be needing them in whatever black site that he'd be languishing in for the rest of his life and it wasn't as if he'd earned his money legitimately anyway, that was why he was in a federal black site. Having exclusive use of a G550 made it easier for them to get around the country and do things as well (to get around the world for that matter), so as soon as they'd transferred the ownership (with a couple of untraceable previous owners in there to hide the back trail) and changed the livery, they started putting it to use. One of the first trips was for Chuck and Sarah to go to D.C. to have that talk to the DNI, with Auntie Di along.

* * *

Washington - September 2008

The meeting started off a little shaky, as the DNI was understandably angry about being lied to about, well, pretty much everything, but they answered his questions and he slowly came around. Things were going well towards the end of the meeting, until Chuck introduced another twist, having over a pile of paperwork and informing the DNI that they wished to add another member to the core Intersect team, "Air Force Captain Fiona Daria Rodya Sir, we'd like to transfer her in from the Defense Intelligence Agency under the same terms and conditions as the other agents have been transferred in."

The DNI knew Diane well enough to catch her flash of emotion when the woman's name was mentioned. He decided to take the direct approach "Can you tell me why Mister Bartowski hasn't come through you with this request Diane?" The look she shot at Chuck confused him, as it was almost equal parts anger and gratitude. "Because I have a conflict of interest here Mike, you see Captain Rodya is my daughter."

He just stared at her when she said that, and then he remembered something "This was why you needed that six month remote posting back at the end of eighty, wasn't it?" She nodded "I had to get out of sight for the later months of the pregnancy and the first couple of months after she was born. I had some friends who wanted to adopt her, and who I knew would care for her and raise her well, but I needed to be out of the public eye until after she was born."

He looked down at the name "Rodya?" She nodded again, "Yes, her father was a Russian agent, he defected to us when the KGB dissolved as well." She turned to look at Chuck "I don't know how Chuck found out about her though?"

He looked a little guilty "It was that deep cover agent database that we recovered Auntie Di, she was in there because she's DCS. When I saw her name I started getting flashes of additional information, and they showed me who her parents were. Then when I saw her picture, I remembered seeing the two of you together a few times, so I figured that she knew about you. We haven't approached her at all, but I thought if we could get it approved you could ask her if she wanted to come over. I felt that you'd be happier having her in the safer environment of our team, and her record says that she's good enough to be able to fit into the team and contribute."

The DNI smiled when he saw Diane's anger dissipate and she leant in to kiss Chuck on the cheek, saying "Yes, thank you Honey" with a grateful smile. She turned back to the DNI "So, Mike, do you think that you could see your way clear to get the President to approve having my daughter transferred into the Intersect team under the same conditions as the rest of the team?"

He started going through the paperwork in front of him and nodded "Yes, as Mister Bartowski has said, Captain Rodya's record is good enough to support her being part of the Intersect team, and his justification here explaining how adding a DIA agent to the team would be a benefit makes quite a valid case, he looked at the other paperwork and smiled. "He's even got reports of the times that she's worked with the team and how well she fitted in…." He suddenly frowned and looked sharply at Chuck.

Chuck shook his head "No Sir, I haven't altered her records, you can check with her superiors if you need confirmation that she's done what's recorded for her." The DNI shook his head at that "No, Chuck, I am prepared to take your word on that, but while it's very impressive what you can do with records, I really wish that you weren't so cavalier with the government's records."

He looked at Diane "Do you want to find out whether Fiona wants to join the team Diane?" She nodded with a smile and pulled out her phone. "Dasha, it's Mom Honey, can you talk? Good, an opportunity to join the Intersect team has come up and we were wondering whether you'd be interested?" She glanced at Chuck and Sarah "Yes, you'd be working with Chuck, but please don't try to flirt with him Honey, because his wife is a very dangerous woman…. Oh, I'm sorry Honey, It's just that, well you know that I worry that you're a bit too much like your father sometimes….. Oh that's wonderful, we'll get moving on it then, I'm in the DNI's office now….. No, it was Chuck actually, he found out who you were and put together the case to get you added to the team….Yes, but just remember what I said about Sarah! OK Honey, I'll talk to you soon, hopefully it won't take too long to get this through, bye."

She looked at the DNI and said "Yes please Mike, can we see if we can get this through please?" He nodded with a strange smile on his face, after a while she said "What?"

He shook his head "I'm sorry, it's just that of all the things that I could see Diane Beckman as, a mother was never one of them." She glared at him, then sighed in resignation "No, I didn't see myself as a mother either Mike, but while her father was, is, the most infuriating man I've ever met, I was madly in love with him, I still am unfortunately" Of the people in the room, only Chuck really understood what she was saying, as he was the only one who really knew Uncle Roan, and he gave her a sympathetic smile. She reached over to squeeze his hand gratefully and continued "I could never consider giving up the baby when I was pregnant, and when Dasha was born, I felt complete. My friends always made sure she knew who her mother was, even though they were the ones who were raising her, and I saw her as often as I could, we both did. I'm afraid that I wasn't very supportive when she decided to follow me into an intelligence career, but my friends made me see that she just wanted to be like me, so I tried to help her along her chosen path then." She looked at Sarah with a smile "She's better than I ever was though, she may not be up to your level but she's more than a match for most agents, and working with you, I can only see her getting better."

Chuck and Sarah decided to stay another day or two in D.C. to see how this panned out, so they arranged to visit with Stephen and Leslie and do a few touristy things. The President signed off the order the next morning, and as Dasha was currently between assignments, she packed her bags to go back to L.A. with them. Diane had decided to come to L.A. to get a few things sorted out as well, but before they left, she pulled Chuck aside and told him that they'd never got around to telling her about what they were before, and she wanted to do that in the safer environment of the Castle. Chuck nodded and quietly told Sarah.

On the flight home, they agreed that Dasha's cover job would be as the executive assistant for Carmichael Industries, assisting Sarah, Chuck and Anna. She'd also be staying in one of the guest rooms in the Keep until they sorted out her accommodation.

The talk with Dasha about the fact that both of her parents were ex-KGB agents, as were most of the people around them, went as well as could expected at first, but as her questions were answered, she slowly came around. The fact that Fiona had only been chosen to make her name sound more western also irritated her at first, but she was touched by the fact that most of her name was actually made up of her parents' real first names, and at least she knew why they'd always called her Dasha now.

The fact that she came to L.A. so she could talk to Dasha in a safe environment was the reason that Diane was there when Sarah got the call from her father.

* * *

Pasadena - September 2008

Sarah was talking to Chuck (as usual) when her mobile phone rang, coming up with an unknown number. She frowned as she looked up at Chuck, as he'd made sure that that phone was the epitome of unlisted numbers, he'd used his prodigious abilities to ensure that any record of it had been scrubbed from any and every on-line system in the world. What that meant was that there were only a handful of people outside of the family who should have that number, and neither of them could think of any reason for any of them to be using an unknown number, so she answered it on speaker "Hello?"

They both recognised the voice saying "Hello Darlin', how are ya?" and Sarah froze, so Chuck leant over to hit the button to secure the office, then squeezed her shoulders and kissed her on the cheek to bring her back. She looked up at him gratefully and pulled him in for a kiss for strength before she answered "Dad, how did you get this number?"

"That's the greeting I get after ten years? After everything I've done for you? I'm disappointed Darlin', I thought I raised you better than that."

"You didn't raise me, you just spent eight years dragging me through the cesspits of the country, using me to help you! Now, for the last time before I hang up and never speak to you again, how did you get this number?"

"That's no way to speak to your father!"

"Goodbye Dad!"

"No, wait! The man who came to see me when I was released gave it to me."

"Who was it, and why would he do that?"

"I don't know, it was that FBI agent who arrested me in San Diego, he said that he gave it to me so I could talk to you as I'm not supposed to see you, or anyone else I know from the business, but I have to see you Darlin', it's been ten years since I've seen my little girl."

"Describe him!"

"About six and a half feet tall, black, a bit older than me but in good shape."

Sarah and Chuck looked at each other, that had to be Graham. Chuck hit the 'Mute' button on Sarah's phone "Why would Graham spring your father and give him your number?" She frowned "It must have been some plan to try and get me back under his control, let us have a father and daughter reunion in hope that I'd forgive him and we'd bond, then arrest him again and hold him over my head to try and make me do what he wanted."

Chuck nodded and smiled, impressed yet again as the woman he loved put that together faster than he could. Sarah saw what was going through his head and smiled up at him. She knew that Chuck loved her as much for her intelligence as he did for her beauty, but seeing yet another confirmation of that made her love him all the more. Sarah dragged him down for a searing kiss to show him just how much she loved him at that moment, but also because she needed it to give her the strength to deal the bastard who was on the phone at the moment, and who was interrupting their kiss by trying to get her attention.

"Darlin'? Darlin'? Are you there?"

She gave a frustrated sigh as she hit the 'Mute' button again and snapped "What, Dad?"

"I thought you'd gone."

"Not yet, unfortunately! Why did you call me Dad?"

"It's been ten years, I've missed you and I need to see you, I need to make things right."

Sarah looked up at Chuck with a raised eyebrow, but he waved to her to say that it was her choice, he'd support whatever she decided to do. She smiled at him and kissed his hand, which she was still holding, he always knew and gave her what she needed. She reached a decision.

"Alright Dad, I'll see you, when and where do you want to meet me?"

"How about dinner, tonight, the Marriot at seven?"

"OK, but my boyfriend will be coming with me."

"No Darlin', I need to talk to you alone!"

"If you want to see me, that's my terms, we're a package deal!"

"But I need to speak to you alone Darlin'."

"What part of 'that's my terms' don't you understand? I'm not negotiating with you, I'm telling you, it's the two of us or nothing!"

"I guess I'll have to let you bring your schnook then, but I DO need to talk to you in private Darlin', there are things that can't be said in front of other people."

"You'll LET me? Didn't I just tell you that this wasn't a negotiation? Forget it Dad, I'm not going to make Charlie wait around while I go off and have some private conversation with you!"

She drew a breath to compose herself. "You know what? This was a bad idea, goodbye Dad, don't call me again!"

"No! Wait! Wait, I'm sorry Darlin', I guess I'm still thinking of you as my little girl who was happy when it was just you and me. I'll do it on your terms, OK? I just need to see my little girl!"

She looked at Chuck, knowing that his position would still be that it was purely her choice, but she really just had to draw strength from looking at her wonderful husband "OK, we'll see you there at seven."

He'd obviously fooled himself into thinking that he had the situation under control, because his next words were "So, who is this 'Charlie' anyway Darlin'? Some schnook that you're working?"

Even he could recognise that he was on thin ice from her tone when she replied "No, he's my BOYFRIEND, I gave the game away after you got yourself arrested. I put everything associated with you behind me as soon as I got away from you. Look, forget it, you're just going to aggravate me more if I see you."

"No, please Darlin'? I need see you!"

"We'll see you at seven, if you piss me off we're gone. And Dad, YOU'RE paying! Charlie will insist on paying for us but you won't let him, do you understand?"

"Yes Darlin', I'm paying."

"Right, we'll see you then. Wait! What name are you using?"

"Jack Burton"

"Well I suppose it's a good thing that I'm still going by Jenny Burton then isn't it? Goodbye Dad." And with that she cut the link.

She shook her head "That idiot is going to try to get me to help him work you! I'm betting that Graham told him that you're some rich mark that I'm working, arrgghhh!"

Sarah stood up and wrapped her arms around Chuck's neck "I need to get him, them, out of my head, take me to bed and lose me forever Honey!"

He gave her a squeeze and kissed her, but the nerd in him couldn't let that go "Baby, that's not the way that quote…."

"I know Chuck! Shut up, please? I just need you to make me forget all this shit at the moment."

He just kissed her and led her into the bathroom shared between their offices, where the small private elevator up to the Keep was.

* * *

Mostly, what they did upstairs was just hold each other as Chuck kissed Sarah's cares away, but she was feeling much better when they came back down to call a meeting with everyone a couple of hours later.

When she heard that Jack was back and he was trying to interfere in Sarah's, and Chuck's, lives again, Mary's immediate response was to jump up, preparing to rush down there and end the miserable bastard once and for all. Carina and Zondra were also on their feet, ready to join her, because Sarah had told them enough stories about her father that they were determined to make sure that that bastard wasn't going to hurt their girl any more either. Chuck had been prepared for this though, and he'd sealed the room so that only he could unlock it, to make them all listen to what they had planned.

When they'd settled down a little, they started listening. The others were set aback when Chuck brought up the issue that they didn't know for sure that this wasn't still a CIA operation, and therefore they had to be prepared in case this was an attempt to grab Sarah, as they hadn't considered that possibility. A few of the others were commenting that surely he wouldn't be involved in setting up his own daughter like that, but they were shocked and chilled by Emma's response, in a cold, hard, hateful voice that none of them would have ever expected to come from sweet, kind Emma.

"Yes, he would! He never wanted her, as far as he was concerned she was just an unwanted by-product of the sex that was all he was after when he talked me into having a baby. From the day she was born, Samanta was nothing more than something to be used to get what he wanted, so if he could see any benefit to himself in selling my baby out to the CIA or anyone else, he'd do it without a second thought!"

She started crying then and Chuck immediately pushed Sarah to go to her, she shot him a look of love and devotion and quickly stretched up on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek before rushing to her mother's side, thinking 'That's my man!' Chuck followed a little behind, enfolding the two of them in an embrace, and Emma stretched up on tiptoe to gratefully kiss her son in law on the cheek too, as she'd caught his immediate reaction when she broke down.

When she'd recovered herself a little, Chuck kissed both of them on the head and laid out the plan, the restaurant was only lightly booked that night, or it was before he inserted bookings for three couples, one table of four and one table of three. Anna had insisted on being part of the action here because she was part of this family and people she loved were at risk, so she, Diane and Dasha were on one table. Diane was the only one of the original team that Jack wouldn't recognise, it was even risky having Ellie there, but she was even more adamant than Anna about being there to do her part if necessary.

They agreed all the details, everyone inside would be there, armed and wearing as much body armour as they could hide under their clothes. Mary and Emma would be outside in the vans with Jeff and Skip for technical support and the rest of the Shadow Security team in case backup was needed, and they'd quietly arranged for an FBI strike team to be there as well, just in case.

* * *

When they were getting ready in the Keep, Sarah picked up Chuck's long barrel Glock 20 to hand to him and stopped "That's something I've been meaning to ask you about for a while now, why do you and Casey always carry these cannons? You use the ten millimetre Auto versions of the MP fives too."

He kissed her cheek as he took the pistol and tucked it into the back of the waistband of his trousers, slipping the spare magazines into his pocket before picking up the Glock 29 in its ankle holster to strap it on as he explained. "Casey and I have been working with the FBI's HRT and SWAT teams on and off for most of the time we've been working together, and they've been using ten millimetre Auto for twenty years now. The ten millimetre gives us much more stopping power, penetration and range than the nine millimetre does, and as it was usually just the two of us on operations against god knows how many, we decided a long time ago to go with whatever gave us the best advantage. If we can get away with it, we'll go with the AS VAL over the MP five ten for the same reason. The ten millimetre Auto cartridges can be loaded for anything from light rifle rounds down to subsonic rounds like the forty S and W that you often go with can, so it gives us a lot of flexibility too. Actually the forty S and W was a development of the ten millimetre Auto lite load that they came up with for the FBI's people who were finding the ten millimetre Auto too powerful."

He could see that he had her intrigued now, and smiled as he knew that she'd be trying out the Glock 20s etc down in urban combat range in the near future. She grinned and punched him in the shoulder when she saw that smile because she knew that he'd picked up on what she had in mind.

They took what most would have considered a convoluted path to get the the garage, but it was actually the quickest way to get there, as they took their private elevator down to the Dungeon, then walked down to the lift at the other end to bring them back up to the ground floor. In the garage they looked at the cars as they discussed their options "Your father's bound to be watching to see what we arrive in to try and measure me up." Sarah nodded "So, limo or something flashy?"

Sarah grinned "I'm in the mood for something flashy!" then she frowned "But if I WAS working you, I'd be the passenger, cooing at you and stroking your ego, so you'd be driving." She wasn't at all happy about that, because she loved to drive fast cars, and the collection they had there was like candy to someone like her. Once again, Chuck knew what was going through her head and whispered "Sorry" as he leant in to kiss her. He decided on the SL 65 AMG again, as that was one of his favourites, and grabbing the keys, led her over to open her door and hand her into the car.

They both saw Jack scuttling away as they pulled up to the front doors of the Marriot. He would have recognised Sarah as soon as he saw her because there was no mistaking that she was Emma's daughter. Chuck jumped out and stopped the doorman from opening Sarah's door with a look as he came around to do it and hand her out of the car himself. Sarah smiled and kissed him on the cheek, knowing that that wouldn't have been for Jack even if he'd still been there watching, that was just Chuck. Chuck fixed the valet with a look much like the one he'd used the night they took Sasha Banacheck down, making sure he understood what would happen to him if there was a single scratch on this car when he got it back.

* * *

Downtown L.A. - September 2008

As they were walking in arm in arm, they quietly asked the ones in the van whether they were hearing anything to indicate that this might be a trap, and were relieved to hear them say 'no'. They both snorted at Emma's disgusted tone when she muttered "You've GOT to be kidding me!" as she watched the image of Jack hustling up in an Armani suit, pretending that he was late because he was coming straight from a meeting, on the feed from the cameras and mics that the two of them were wearing in the van.

Jack obviously still lived by the same 'fake it until you make it' rules he always had, and he'd obviously pulled some cons before he got there to get the money for that suit. Sarah smiled to herself as she thought that he didn't wear it anywhere near as naturally as Chuck wore his, but then Chuck wore this type of thing most of the time as Charles Carmichael and his was just part of his normal workaday wardrobe, whereas she had to fight the urge to check whether her father's still had the tags in it.

Emma showed just how well she knew her daughter when she said "Samanta! Behave!" in an amused voice and Chuck bent down to kiss Sarah, to both cover up their laughter and whisper into the mic "Stop it you two, we need to pull this off!" as Mary was laughing with Emma in the van. They only just managed to keep straight faces as Jack came out with the expected line "I thought I was going to have to call you and tell you I'd be late because my last meeting ran over!"

Sarah had to rein herself in when Jack tried the power move of pretending to get the name they gave him for Chuck, 'Charlie Hunter', wrong and called him 'Harry', as if he were too important to remember it. She smiled to herself though when Chuck turned it back on him and called him 'Jock', because her father didn't like that at all! They heard their mothers snickering about that, but they didn't say anything this time.

When they reached the restaurant, Chuck and Sarah's eyes surreptitiously swept the tables and they picked up the minuscule head shakes from Casey, Carina, Zondra and the others to say that they hadn't picked up on anything untoward in the restaurant. Feeling a little more comfortable about that, Chuck pulled Sarah's chair out to seat her, manoeuvring things to ensure that they could both watch the entrances, while Jack sat himself down without waiting.

It was amusing to Sarah and the watchers (both in the van and in the restaurant) as Chuck kept subtly correcting Jack's choices of wine and the like, telling the waiter that he and Sarah would prefer something other than the most expensive choices that Jack kept going for. Jack wasn't an entirely incompetent conman and he picked up the respect being shown in the responses of the waiters at 'Charlie's corrections, so he backed off on the power moves a little as he decided that that Feeb had been right, this guy obviously WAS rich and powerful, so trying to one up him in his world would be a fool's game.

Jack changed tacks then, launching into a series of stories about what a wonderful and exciting time 'Jenny' had had as she grew up on the road, but he wasn't paying attention to his daughter, so he missed the fact that this wasn't working either. Chuck was pretending to enjoy the stories and build a rapport with Jack, but he was watching Sarah getting more and more upset until she threw her cutlery down and spat out.

"Yeah Dad, it was a wonderful time! I really enjoyed having dirty old men trying to get their hands into my panties from before I was eight, squeezing my bottom, and my breasts too as soon as they started to become noticeable. And I loved the way they kept trying to get me to come back to their rooms with them to give me a present! The only one who was having a great time back then was YOU, so stop playing around and tell me what you're here for!"

He did a fairly credible job of pretending to look shocked "Darlin' you should have told me, I never would have let that happen to you if I'd known!"

"Don't you fucking dare pretend that you didn't know, the only reason you took me to those places was use me to try and entice those perverts to get them to work with you on your cons, you knew EXACTLY what they were doing and you encouraged it! In fact a few of them told me just what you'd promised them after I damaged them for what they were trying to do to me!"

They could hear a chorus of growls over their earwigs, and the sounds of a scuffle from the van as the others tried to restrain Mary from coming up there to kill the bastard. They also heard Emma's heartbroken sobbing as she heard what had been done to her baby. Chuck's glass shattered as his hand clenched while he tried to restrain himself, but he just dropped the remains on the table and wiped his hand off with a napkin. He held up a hand to stop the others as he tried to comfort Sarah. When she had control of herself she kissed him again, whispering "I love you!" before she turned to her father.

The look of love and wonder she'd directed at Chuck was replaced with rage and revulsion as she addressed her father "I told you to tell me what you're here for!"

Jack realised that it was a waste of time to try and play the game any more so he leant forward and spoke to his daughter harshly in Polish _'You want to know why I_ _a_ _m here? I am here to get what you owe me! I spent ten years in prison, getting terrible things done to me! YOU caused this_ _when_ _you insisted on stopping in one place to finish school,_ _because you had some stupid idea about going to university! I need money to get set up to work again, you will get that money for me from HIM, two million may be enough to start but five million would be better, and_ _then_ _you will come with me and work with me again. This new look you have, that will make it easy to separate many men from their money. Do not look at me like that! You will do as I say or I will tell him things about you that will make him wish that he never saw you!'_

He froze and stopped talking at that point because Chuck drove a steak knife through the table, between his fingers. At first he didn't realise that Chuck was also speaking in Polish, possibly because he was frantically checking to see whether he still had all of his fingers. _'_ _You really are stupid Uncle Jack! You were so tied up in your_ _pathetic scheme_ _to play me that you didn't recognise me!_ _E_ _ven when we used_ _a name as obvious as_ _Charlie Hunter!_ _Maybe I should tell them to_ _let_ _Mom_ _go_ _and let her come up here to do what she's been wanting to do ever since she heard that you'_ _d_ _called Samanta. You will remember her, I am sure, Mary, the Frost Queen, do you remember her Uncle Jack?'_

Jack looked horrified, and gasped "Królowa Mrózu?" Chuck nodded as he smiled grimly "I knew that you would remember her!" Then he went on in Polish again _'Samanta does not owe you anything! She deserves the right to kill you slowly and painfully because of what she was forced to endure because of your stupidity and greed!'_ Jack banged angrily on the table at that and shouted _'You do not know the shameful and disgusting things that were done to me in prison, because SHE wanted to go to university!"_

Chuck leant over the table and shouted in his face _'I don't care what happened to you, you pathetic bastard! Anything you may have endured was nothing but than a tiny fraction of what Samanta was_ _forced_ _to go through! And it WASN'T because of her that you got caught, you got caught because you were too arrogant and stupid to honour your promise to stop running cons for one year. She asked you for just one year so that she could get herself prepared for a decent life and you fucking promised to give her that much! But it wasn't even half of that before you started trying to run cons again, was it? What's more you did it all behind her back and led the fucking CIA straight to her, just like you led the FBI to Auntie Em! YOU are the cause of all the pain and horror that my Samanta has gone through and I desperately want to kill you for that, slowly and painfully, but I_ _will not_ _take away her right to_ _extract_ _justice from you for what you_ _ha_ _ve done to her!'_

Jack just sat there, paralysed in fear as he looked into Chuck's eyes, as he'd seen eyes like that before, both in and out of prison, and he'd seen the sort of things that happened to the ones that the people with those eyes were looking at, they invariably died, or wished they had. Oh yes, this was Królowa Mrózu's son, he could see that now!

Chuck saw out of the corner of his eye that Casey and Ellie had stopped the ones who'd been coming over to try and break up the screaming match in some foreign language. He drew a breath and went on more quietly.

' _This is what is going to happen Uncle Jack, when we leave here, you will forget Samanta's number and you will never attempt to contact Samanta or anyone else in the family ever again. Furthermore, you will never say a single word about anyone in the family to anyone. You will also give up the con game, which you are obviously too stupid for, and you will try to make an honest living with a normal job. In fact you will never do anything illegal ever again, do you know why Uncle Jack? You will do exactly as I say because as soon as I get home tonight I will be linking every single alias and image that has ever been associated with you in every law enforcement database around the world, I will link in every con and other thing that you've ever done, and I may add in others that are similar. On top of that though, I will be expanding your records to show all of the disgusting things that you have been doing to innocent children over the past forty years or more. As you've proven that you are far from the sharpest tool in the shed, I'll explain this to you more simply.'_

' _If you do ANYTHING at all to make the Police look at you, speed, run a red light, park in the wrong place, anything, no matter where you are, you will be arrested. When you are arrested, they'll find out what a disgusting child molester you are and you will be thrown straight into prison to protect the children from you. But when you go to prison this time, you'll be remembering what happened to you before as the good times, because they do not like animals who do nasty things to little children in prison. I have a theory about why that is the case, you see I believe that most men, no matter how bad they are, care for their children, present company excluded of course! That's why the men in prison do whatever they can to ensure that monsters like your records will say that you are NEVER get out of prison, they do this to protect their children, and possibly other children, from monsters like you.'_

' _Do you understand me Uncle Jack?'_ Jack nodded frantically. It was getting to be quite unpleasant to be close to him now because he'd voided his bowels while Chuck was shouting at him, and the smell was turning their stomachs. Chuck tried to get Sarah to wait for him at the door but she wouldn't leave until he did, so he wound this up quickly.

' _So this is what will happen Uncle Jack, you will NEVER try to contact or say anything about Samanta or anyone else in the family EVER again. You will go straight and make sure you never give the Police any reason to look at you, and you will do absolutely everything in your power to ensure that Samanta and I never have any reason to think about you ever again. If you fail to meet any one of these requirements, I will come after you, and I can assure you that I will find you. When I do, no matter how far you run or where you hide, even if you're in the most secure prison in the world, I will get to you, and I will end you, so slowly and painfully that you're begging to die. Do you understand?'_

Jack just responded with a gasping, horrified _'YES!'_

Chuck looked at Sarah to ask if she wanted to add anything and she smiled grimly _'One more thing DADDY, I know that you're afraid of Auntie Mary?'_ He nodded frantically again _'Well you should know that Charlie and I?_ _We'_ _re much better than Auntie Mary ever was, so don't think for a minute that Charlie wo_ _uld_ _n't be able to do what he's promised you, because I can assure you,_ _that_ _wasn't a threat, that was a promise!'_

With that, Chuck put his arm around her and led her from the restaurant, the others threw cash on the tables that would more than cover the cost of their meals and tips as they left on Chuck and Sarah's heels. When they saw Chuck heading for the door, the valets scrambled to get his SL and bring it up as quickly as they could without risking scratching it, as he looked even more imposing now than he had when he arrived.

Jack was still sitting at the table, shaking, after the last of them had left the hotel, but he was firmly asked to leave, because the smell was being noticed by others. He'd hardly had a chance to get back to his room and clean himself up before he saw police cars pulling up to the front of the hotel. Knowing that it would be about the incident at the restaurant and that they'd be sent straight to his room in a moment, he scrabbled to throw his things (including the befouled Armani suit) into his bags and ran down the back stairway to the hotel's parking level where he threw everything in the car and drove off as quickly as he could without attracting attention.

By the time they got back to the Castle, Sarah was feeling a little bit better, and as soon as she got out of the car she was being hugged by Emma, Mary, Ellie, Diane, Carina, Zondra and Anna. Chuck was being hugged by everyone, male and female, as the ones who spoke Polish had translated what he and Jack had said for the others. Mary and Casey told him how proud they were of him, while Emma couldn't stop thanking him.

It would take them a while to get the distasteful thought of Jack Burton from their minds, but at least he was behind them.

 **A/N: If people need an image in their mind's eye for Dasha, it's Summer Glau, the angry assassin Greta from Chuck and River from Firefly in my mind. And BTW yes, Zoe IS Zoe from Firefly, that was supposedly her maiden name from the stories.**

 **A/N 2: The quote was, of course, Meg Ryan's line from Top Gun 'take me to bed or lose me forever'.**

 **A/N3: The Jack segment may have been too dark for some, but that's the way it came out and I believe that it's in context.**


	12. Suburgatory

**Leyte, thanks.**

 **Nancy, thanks. Unfortunately it feels as though I'm sitting in an empty room talking to myself most of the time and it just makes you think, what's the point? NB: As you like Steampunk stories, a new site's starting up that may become something you like, drop me a PM if you'd like the address.**

 **JR, thanks. As I laid out in Chapter 1 and Emma said, he never wanted his daughter and just used her for his own ends, in that context I don't feel I was too hard on him.**

 **Thanks everyone for your understanding, except that troll M/Marc/Not Mark.**

 **Adult concepts in this one.**

 **Usual disclaimers, no rights to any characters portrayed, this isn't the real world and it's not a Disney Princess story.**

Pasadena – September 2008

As soon as he got upstairs, Chuck set up tracking on Jack, to make sure he didn't do anything stupid enough to put anyone on Sarah's (or Emma's) trail again, he didn't say anything to Sarah about it, but she worked it out herself of course. He let him skipping out of the Marriot and ditching the credit cards he was using without paying his bills slide, as he'd just put the fear of god into him about what would happen to him if he was arrested and he HAD done what he told Jack he'd do to his records. When Jack spent the next three or four weeks repeatedly changing identities and towns without any indication of planning to settle down to an honest life, though, Chuck started prodding, with Sarah's help.

Whenever Jack got a new mobile, they would call him and play him a clip from a song about 'watching you' or prison. Whenever he got to a new town, he'd get a call that night with the same type of thing, and the local radio stations would be full of dedications of those songs to the names of his more common aliases. For another few weeks, Jack tried to run and hide whenever they did that, but he soon worked out that what his daughter's boyfriend had told him was true, that there was no way to hide from him.

Jack also realised out that if he didn't do as 'Charlie' told him, he would carry through on the 'promise' that he'd made (which was remarkably similar to what his mother had threatened when he and Samantha were kids, now that he remembered it), so he got himself a job as salesman in a town in the mid-west and settled down to a 'normal' life. He was hoping that doing what he was told might be enough to keep him safe from his daughter's boyfriend and his mother, and his own daughter for that matter.

Dasha's accommodation arrangements fell into place fairly easily when Ellie moved in with John, as Dasha moved in to share the apartment with Anna. By then she'd already been exposed to the breakfast meetings in the Keep's informal kitchen, so she was settling in OK. Having operational meetings around the breakfast table with everyone in their sleepwear (except her mother who was in uniform via video-conference), was a little hard to get used to after seven years in the military, but it was effective and they covered a lot more in the time frame than most meetings did, so maybe it was a better way to do it?

The alarm bells went off when the Intersect team was engaged to help clean up a major joint CIA/DEA operation. Jane Bentley was handling it for the CIA, but it was obvious to anyone that knew her that she wasn't at all happy about it, and her ex-mentee knew her better than anyone else. The operation that they were supposed to be bringing down had drug trafficking as its basis, but they were now moving more into trading in weapons, specifically cyber weapons, as their primary business.

The focus of this organisation meant that Carina and Sarah had to be involved, but Anna was also pulled into the team, as none of them knew how a business of this nature operated better than she did. There was a reason why Anna was the COO of Carmichael Industries, she'd been handling the operations and most of the business matters for her and Chuck's companies from the start and she was almost as smart as Chuck and Sarah. Anna could pick up things that the rest of the team were likely to miss and they needed her if this was to be the quick in and out operation that it was supposed to be, so Chuck went into the mission with three 'companions', a redhead (Sarah had gone red for this), a brunette (Carina had gone back to her natural dark brown colour while she was with Dr Dreyfus) and an Asian.

* * *

Outside Rio – November 2008

When they walked into the mansion to meet the boss of the organisation, Fernando Rodrigo, they knew instantly that this was a setup. While they were supposed to be hidden, there were FAR too many cameras around for an operation of this nature. Chuck surprised the women when he improvised, because that was something he never did. Up until now he'd had a plan for every situation, but they'd been suckered with this one and it had gone far further than they'd expected. So, when they were told by an assistant that they would be shown to the rooms that had been prepared for them, he arced up "Rooms? No! One room, my women will stay with me!"

The assistant's jaw was broken when Chuck back handed him for trying to tell him that the arrangements had already been made and couldn't be changed, and the guards who went for their guns when he did that suddenly found themselves staring down the barrels of the pair of gold Desert Eagles that had appeared in his hands as if by magic. That, and the look in his eye which told them that this man definitely knew what he was doing and nothing would stop him, made them put their hands up, because they weren't about to die that day.

Chuck looked Rodrigo in the eye and said "We are done here Senor, I will not stand for being disrespected like this!" Rodrigo barked an order and the assistant was shot in the head, then he turned to Chuck, saying "I am sorry Senor Hunter, that idiot, he was my wife's nephew so I had to take him on to appease her. We will have your room ready for you and your ladies momentarily! May I offer you refreshments while you wait?"

He got a curt nod at that as Chuck put the Desert Eagles away, but the girls said that they were going to the little girls' room. When they were inside, after they'd done their business and washed their hands, they were standing at the mirror touching up their makeup when Anna activated a white noise generator and started talking in Polish, hardly moving her lips _'Do not react to what I say. This is obviously a setup and we're going to be recorded all the time, so I_ _should_ _be the_ _main_ _fuck toy_ _while_ _you two_ _are_ _the arm candy. That way, I will be the one who_ _i_ _s_ _being_ _recorded having_ _wild public sex with_ _Chuck_ _and what_ _ever_ _he does with you can be_ _more subtle,_ _under the covers. Sarah,_ _I_ _a_ _m trying_ _to_ _prevent_ _this sullying the beauty of what you have with Chuck or effecting your relationship with your best friend. I hope it doesn't effect our relationship, but if it does, that's a price I_ _a_ _m prepared to pay, as long as you don't try to block my friendship with Chuck. Carina, hopefully this will also make it easier for you and what you have with Leslie.'_

She looked at Sarah quickly _'There is part of_ _my history with Chuck_ _that you were_ _no_ _t told as it does n_ _o_ _t effect the love he has for you but_ _it_ _would_ _have_ _given you the wrong impression_ _about_ _what we have_ _. Before I had Jill, the way I felt about Chuck_ _was_ _m_ _aking_ _me question_ _just_ _what my orientation was, so I talked him into having us learn about sex with each other._ _I_ _guilted him into_ _it_ _really,_ _as I told him if he loved me he'd do this for me._ _I kept pushing the boundaries, we watched and acted out erotica, and_ _some_ _porn, and the sex_ _with him_ _was incredible, but I found that except for Chuck, I am a lesbian, any other_ _guy_ _touching me in any sort of sexual capacity makes me want to throw up.'_

' _After that, we settled back into being friends as I found Jill and I was happy with her until she left. When I got the letter telling me about why she had left though, I fell apart, I wanted to die, so I begged Chuck to make me forget, everything. He did, for about a week, and that was what made me able to go on with my life.'_ She turned and looked Sarah in the eye _'They were the only times I swear, we never hooked up because we were bored and it has never gone beyond what you have seen since he found you again, he loves you with all his heart and he would never cheat on you, he did only this to help me when I needed him. Will you let me do this for you now so this shit does not sully what the two of you have, please?'_

Sarah stared at her for a while, stunned, then leant in to embrace and kiss her. _'I never thought that I_ _woul_ _d agree to another woman having sex with_ _my husband,_ _the man I love, but if you_ _a_ _re sure that you_ _a_ _re OK with it,_ _you are right_ _,_ _knowing that_ _those sick bastards_ _would be_ _watching recordings of what_ _should be a private act of love between us would hang over what_ _we have_ _. Are you_ _CERTAIN_ _that you_ _wi_ _ll be OK doing this_ _though_ _?'_

Anna nodded, saying _'I was always a bit of an exhibitionist, so putting on a show doesn't bother me, and_ _I want to do this_ _for you_ _to repay Chuck for what he's done for me, and because_ _I love both of you.'_

Sarah kissed her again for that. _'Thank you for doing this for us! I think I need to be the one who tells him though, otherwise the guilt will eat him up.'_

Anna nodded again and Carina came in to kiss her as well. _'Thank you_ _Sweetie_ _, yes, it would be hard_ _for me_ _to look Leslie in the eye after I_ _ha_ _ve_ _had to have sex with Chuck.'_ They all embraced and then Anna turned off the white noise generator, finished fixing her makeup and they went out to where Chuck was sitting with Rodrigo.

When they got to him, Sarah gracefully straddled Chuck and kissed him, explaining Anna's plan in segmented whispers when her mouth was close enough to his ear. She saw his eyes widen when he heard the plan but he covered it up with an eager smile and, much as she expected, while he had to agree that this was the best approach for the situation they were in, for all of them, his main focus was making sure that she was OK with it. It took them five minutes between kisses to assure each other that they were both OK with the plan, and she reluctantly got off his lap as he reached out to pull Carina down in her place.

Sarah had to snort at the way that Chuck melted Carina's brain with one kiss, Carina was infamous as the most accomplished sexbot in the business, but she'd never experienced what Chuck could do with that marvellous mouth of his before. She thought 'Oh, how the mighty have fallen!' to herself with a smile.

Carina started to come out of the daze that kiss had put her into and started to say "What…..", but he closed her lips with another kiss. This one was intended to give her time to regain her composure though, and she turned it into a thank you kiss once she had, thinking that she kept underestimating this one.

When she'd regained her composure, Anna pushed her off Chuck's lap, saying "My turn!" as she hiked her skirts up to straddle him and proceeded to kiss him rather more aggressively. That kiss raised the temperature of the room and Chuck gave every appearance of being right into it, with one hand up her dress, gripping her arse and the other crushing her to him, but Sarah knew that they were actually using it to cover their assuring each other that they were both OK with going forward with her plan.

Rodrigo interrupted them by loudly clearing his throat and Chuck gave him an apologetic smile as they broke off and Anna leant back, her breasts threatening to escape her dress as she tried to get her breath back. "Pardon Senor Rodrigo, my little china doll, she gets excited." Rodrigo looked her over with a hungry smile "Indeed she does, perhaps…."

Chuck cut him off, his face flashing back to the expression that had made the man's guards back down "No! I do not share what is mine! If anyone thinks to 'have a taste' of any of my women while we are here, I can assure you Senor that it will not go well for them, or you!" He took his hand out of Anna's dress and lightly swatted her on the behind to get off him.

"Now, is our room ready yet, or shall we start our business now?"

Rodrigo had almost pissed himself when Chuck fixed him with that look and scrabbled to appease the man. "You must forgive my lack of hospitality Senor Hunter, yes, of course your room is ready so you should go and relax until dinner is ready, we can begin our business tomorrow when you have recovered from your journey."

Chuck nodded and took Sarah's hand, his other arm around Carina's waist as they followed the maid who was leading them to their room, while Anna was holding Carina's hand. Inside the room, they quickly picked up on the cameras that had been hastily but well installed and which covered just about every inch of the bedroom and bathroom, so it would be difficult to talk in there. When they looked at their luggage, they saw that Chuck's order that it not be touched had been obeyed, but they would have been alerted by the built-in security controls if it had been.

By tacit agreement, Anna and Carina were providing a little girl on girl sideshow for the cameras to distract attention, and they started that with a shared shower while the 'redhead' was giving 'Senor Hunter' a massage to try and relax him a little.

They would have enjoyed listening to the phone call that Rodrigo made to the DEA contact who'd set this up "What game are you trying to pull here? Nothing is what you told me it would be!"

"Calm down Senor Rodrigo, what has changed, he's there with the women isn't he?"

"He's here, but he's with a redhead, a brunette and an Asian, and he's not what you told me he'd be, none of them are what you told me they'd be!"

"What do you mean? He must have just brought Rizzo instead of Walker, I don't know who the Asian is, but that isn't that much of a change."

"Except the redhead isn't Miller, the brunette isn't Rizzo, and this Bartowski isn't the weak analyst that you told me he would be! He broke my nephew's jaw and made my best guards look like they should be sent back to the retirement hospice for a minor slight. I had to have my wife's nephew shot to save face and now I will have to put up with all sorts of shit from her for that!"

"It has to be them! They must have just changed their hair colour!"

'They look nothing like the pictures you sent me! The redhead looks natural and I know the brunette is natural, because I'm watching her in the shower now!"

"You need to get the women away from him and find out who they are."

"You can try that for yourself, somewhere well away from my house! The man has already effectively told me that if anyone tries to touch any of his women while he is here, he will raze my house to the ground with me in it and after looking into that man's eyes, I know that he can and will do just that if anyone gives him any cause. No, I will make the deal that he supposedly came down here for with him and try to get rid of him before he destroys me. You can tell your bosses for me that they will pay for sending a wolf like this into my house!" With that he hung up and tried to work out how he could get through this in one piece.

Dinner was polite, though Senora Rodrigo was obviously upset with her husband for having her nephew killed. Senor Hunter charmed her and her daughters, making the girls laugh more than they normally did around their father.

They felt more at easy at dinner, as it appeared that the cameras had only been set up in those rooms where they were mainly expected to be, where they were supposed to be having meetings and in their room, the rest of the mansion appeared to be as they'd expect for someone in this business who didn't want to have any record made of their dealings. Of course, they'd already taken steps to circumvent the cameras in their room, it was relatively easy because they were wireless (they all were actually). Therefore, it was a simple matter for Chuck to handle while he was sitting up in bed working with his laptop propped up on his knees (the screen apparently casually angled to hide it from the cameras), he was configuring the device hidden in their luggage to identify and break into all of their signals, recording all of the feeds so that they could use them to cover their actions later if required.

Stephen and Leslie had come up with the device, which created a virtual Faraday cage to trap the cameras' signals inside the room, it then recorded all the feeds and resent them, so that the feeds appeared normal, even though only the transmissions from the device itself actually left the room. This had the effect of allowing them to set a delay on the transmissions, so if they left the room or someone else was there, the delay was set to zero, but if they were alone in the room, they'd normally set it to 30-60 seconds to give them time if required to cover up what they were doing. It also allowed them to loop the video to cover for them when they left the room, as they intended to do later that night.

When they went back to their room, they knew that they had to put on the expected sex show, especially after Chuck had made it clear that the girls were there for his enjoyment only, so they got changed into negligees, black for Sarah, white for Carina and red for Anna, and went to bed. Chuck just stripped down and got into bed with them, he'd been injured so many times over the years that these people just added to the hundreds who'd already seen him naked while they were patching him up. This also meant that those scars on his body, which served to convince Rodrigo that he did indeed have a wolf in his house, were quite real.

They started out with Chuck and the girls all kissing and caressing each other. After a while Anna started heating things up and took her negligee off, so she was just wearing the matching bottoms, and Chuck started focussed on her breasts as she focussed on his member and Sarah and Carina were keeping things going. They allowed over half an hour of them all working each other up before Chuck pulled the ties on Anna's bottoms and they progressed to the next stage, and while he was having sex with Anna, Chuck was kissing and caressing Sarah and fondling Carina's breasts under her negligee while Carina was kissing Anna's mouth and breasts and fondling her breasts. This escalated for well over half an hour, with everything but the sex with Anna swapping between the parties until they all reached a climax together and collapsed, apparently exhausted.

Their supposed exhaustion was readily believed by the jealous watchers, as they couldn't imagine spending well over an hour satisfying three beautiful women like that, even the ones who fancied themselves as fantastic lovers, and the women had been going at it as well. They just wished that he'd gotten them all naked so that they could have enjoyed the show more, but they recognised a man in command who made sure he got exactly what he wanted. In fact after what had happened that afternoon, they respected Senor Hunter more than they did Senor Rodrigo, not that any of them would have been crazy enough to say that out loud. After watching the pile of bodies on the bed for a while, the watchers lost interest as they looked as though they'd be asleep for the rest of the night.

A few hours after that, when just about everyone in the house was in bed, Chuck started looping the video feed and he and Sarah slipped out of the bed, quickly pulling on their mission outfits, grabbing their gear and heading out to do their job. Back in the room where they'd had their initial meeting, they confirmed that the cameras were off before they entered to go through everything there, getting what they could off the computer there and plugging a disguised remote access device into the network. With what they learned there, they brought up the building plans and hit Rodrigo's main office and the other parts of the house that were used for business, going through everything they could in the two and a half hours before they were alerted to get back to the room. They were back in bed, wearing what they had before and in the same positions, by the time the looped feed finished.

While Chuck and Sarah were doing their job inside the house, Casey, Zondra and Dasha were leading the teams going through the other buildings on the Rodrigo estate, and also heading off for the other locations that Chuck had gotten out of the systems inside the house and sent to them. Jeff, Skip and the others on the tech team were hacking into the systems at the other locations when the incursion teams plugged remote access devices into the network. Between them, they were getting an image of everything that Rodrigo's organisation was doing and everyone they were connected to.

In the morning, Sarah was a little crotchety as she couldn't get by as well as Chuck without sleep, Chuck smiled fondly at her and kissed her, but went back to supposedly going through the figures of the deal he was working on with Rodrigo. What he was actually doing was hacking into all the systems on Rodrigo's core network (which included all their servers) and copying off everything of use to their case. He was also setting up malware all over the systems that could be released when he wanted with a simple trigger. With his eidetic memory, he'd already memorised everything about the deal he was supposed to be doing, and the girls had all gone through it and advised him of any issues they saw in their particular specialities.

Once they'd finished their part of the overnight job, Casey and the rest of the team had returned and had hidden themselves just outside of the Rodrigo estate. Most of them were catching up on the missed sleep from the night before, but they were geared up and ready to go in an instant if they got the signal. Rodrigo had more men, but there was no way they could stand against the shadow team if it came to a fight.

Through the day, the girls were with Chuck wherever he went around the compound, seeing the operation. Rodrigo had to cover up his aggravation while they were doing this, as he'd had to have two more of his senior men shot in the head to save face when they'd made cracks about the women, even though word had been sent around yesterday to order everyone to ensure that they were polite at all times to Senor Hunter and his party. When the wolf was safely gone from his house, there would be questions to be answered about who it was who had failed to ensure that everyone had gotten that message, because he couldn't afford to lose those men and it would make things difficult, but he was more worried about keeping his house, and his life, than he was about anyone who worked for him.

Between the advice the girls had given him earlier and the tips they slipped him in regard to what they observed, Chuck drove a hard bargain and convinced Rodrigo that he was a genius who knew every part of this business back to front. More importantly, they'd identified other areas that the team had to look into, or which would require more visits to get more information (and set cyber and physical bombs). They wound up their business within a day and while Rodrigo wasn't happy with the deal, he took it to get that wolf out of his house.

Rodrigo made the expected offer of another night of hospitality to them, but was relieved when Hunter/Bartowski turned him down, saying that he had business he had to get back to. Rodrigo had other problems anyway, as they apparently had viruses on their computer systems again, which the computer people had been telling him would keep happening unless the men stopped using the computers to look at pornography, so when they found out who it had been, they would be used to make an example for the others.

The people who had set this operation up were angry when they heard that the storage area where the footage of Hunter and his women had been was corrupted, so very little visible footage was recovered and most of that was useless. Rodrigo didn't care whether the DEA were happy or not after those bastards had sent that wolf into his house though, he was more worried about what else he'd lost to this virus, things that actually made him money.

Rodrigo's people saw the G550 take off, but they didn't see it land less than a hundred miles away so that they could return for the final operation. The tiny dresses and tall heels were gone now, the girls were in battle dress and body armour like everyone else, and Chuck was happy to swap those flashy Desert Eagles for his favourite Glock 20 and AS VAL, and a decent computer.

Chuck and Anna took over the hacking effort to get into the rest of the systems to collect what they needed. Once that was done and they'd gotten into the rest of the facilities to collect physical evidence and set bombs, they notified the local forces and gave them what they needed to go in. Just as the authorities started attacking all the targeted facilities, Chuck and the others set off all the cyber and physical bombs, so that the computers and databases were wiped out, and then strategically placed bombs blew up anything important. That distracted Rodrigo's people enough for the government forces to come in and take them down easily, so their team didn't need to assist. With that done, they returned to the airport where their planes were and flew home.

* * *

Pasadena – November 2008

The DEA Administrator wasn't happy about the fact that Rodrigo's organisation had been wiped out, even though that had been officially listed as one of the objectives of the operation. He also got very defensive when they asked why wherever the Intersect team were expected to be in the Rodrigo mansion had been covered in cameras, as though Rodrigo had been told who they were and what they were there for. When Diane put up the files on Chuck, Sarah, Carina and Zondra that Chuck had taken off Rodrigo's systems and asked the Administrator whether he knew how Rodrigo might have gotten them, the man just said that he wasn't going to sit there and be accused of things like this and cut his link. They looked at each other, frowning, because at the very least, his reaction confirmed that he had been part of that, if he knew that he had no part in it he would have just challenged them to provide proof of what they were implying.

They discussed the rest of the outcomes of the operation with Jane Bentley, and she was smiling as she identified what parts of the intel that the CIA wanted, saying that they could do what they liked with what they had. With her leave as the CIA's representative to share the intel with other agencies that the Intersect team was associated with, the FBI got the whole package, with the relevant parts going to the NSA and DIA as well. Even with the DEA's Administrator running off the way he had, they still forwarded all the drug related intel to the DEA, along with their part of the bill for the operation of course.

They sat down and discussed the sex that had been necessary on the mission when they were back at home, safe, and Anna was relieved when they all confirmed that they were comfortable with what had happened and thanked her for doing that for them. She was even more relieved when she and Sarah had a private discussion and Sarah convinced her that she understood why they hadn't mentioned that part of their history and why it happened. She looked Anna in the eye as she told her that she was OK with it, because that was what it was, history, she knew that it wasn't part of what was between her and Chuck now and she trusted both of them. Carina was also grateful to be able to tell Leslie truthfully what did and didn't happen on the mission without it creating any issues between them.

But they still had to find out who'd set them up like that, and why. Yes, they'd had confirmation that the DEA's Administrator was part of it, and were fairly certain that the ACTING Director of the CIA was as well, but they knew that those two weren't the ones behind this. This was one of the many instances when they KNEW that something else was lurking in the shadows, someone else was pulling the strings, and they were bigger and smarter than anyone that they could actually see.

* * *

Washington – January 2009

The team's next major mission came from the NSA, they'd thought that the DCS agent that they sent in to uncover a suspected Fulcrum cell was going well, his cover did not appear to be compromised at all and he reported that he was getting closer to the suspected cell. It was looking good until he suddenly disappeared, only to be found on the side of the road weeks later. The man was apparently brain dead, and when that was mentioned by the Director of the NSA, Diane immediately agreed that the Intersect team would take the assignment, as she remembered from Stephen's reports on the Intersect project what had happened to most of the Intersect test subjects and what they'd ended up like.

She managed to get the man's medical records as part of the information from the NSA, and had Stephen look through them. It didn't take long for Stephen to confirm that the man had almost certainly been an Intersect test subject, which made the path clear, as there was only one person with much chance of surviving being exposed to an Intersect upload without being harmed, AND who had the ability to identify many of the Fulcrum agents, Chuck.

Diane wasn't at all surprised that Chuck immediately recognised what they were up against, or that he'd need to be the one who went in. Nor was she surprised that he fought against Sarah going in with him, because he wanted to protect the woman he loved. She smiled to herself about the fact that she'd realised something before him for once though, especially as it was one his favourite quotes from one of those silly science fiction movies that he loved so, 'Resistance is futile!'

He was the only one in the room who ever thought that there was any possibility of him going in there without Sarah, and she was a little surprised at how long it took him to give in to the inevitable. She didn't say or show anything, but the way he kept fighting the inevitable frightened her, because that had to mean that he knew that this was even more dangerous than the rest of them thought it was. That thought brought up that image she'd put in the DNI's head of American cities looking like war zones after Chuck went on a rampage because something happened to Sarah, so she decided to ensure that they had plenty of support in there.

* * *

Los Angeles – January 2009

The NSA had already arranged to purchase another house in the street where they believed the Fulcrum cell was as soon as their agent disappeared, burying the identity of the buyers so that there would be no connection to them, and the house was now ready to move into. They had IDs ready for Charles and Sarah Cavenagh, and organised a couple of removal vans full of household goods to give them an excuse for Mrs Cavenagh to have a gaggle of girlfriends there helping her get the house set up, as well as Jim Poole, the handyman that the Cavenaghs had engaged to handle the hundred and one things that needed fixing. That meant that they had Casey, Gertrude, Zoe, Ilsa, Carina, Zondra and Dasha at the house with Sarah during the day while Chuck was at work.

Sarah's frantic tone worried Chuck when she called to get him to pick up the meat and everything else they'd need for a barbecue for the whole street, plus them, Jim the handyman, the girls and the guys from work. The girls were staying because they'd been helping her all day, so it was Chuck's job to bring their husbands home with him. He tried to keep his tone light as he asked how many they had to cater for "Oh, I think there's about thirteen or fourteen couples in the neighbours, plus the fifteen for all of us and Jim, so you should get enough for forty five?"

"Can you talk?"

"Only for a moment, those bitches are in and out all the time, they're like evil fucking Stepford wives! They're wrong Chuck, all the girls and Casey agree. That's another thing, we've had a dozen supposedly bored and neglected housewives in and out of here all day, and none of them gave him a second look when he was waltzing about in shorts and a tight T-shirt, you know that's a good look on him so him not getting attention means they're up to something. And the way that they insisted that we put on this 'getting to know the neighbours' barbecue TONIGHT, aaarrrgggghhh!"

"Are you OK?"

"I will be when you get here, but this whole street is so WRONG that we all just want to get the VALs out and see whether they bleed when we shoot them."

He laughed "Well you better not do that until we achieve our mission objectives."

"Uhhu, that's right Honey, now you guys better not stop at any bars on the way home you hear? Because there's so much to do, and we need that food, and you're manning the barbecue!"

It was obvious from that that someone had come in. "I love you, I'll be there as soon as I can."

"Love you too Honey. Actually do you think could you see if you could talk Mike into letting you guys finish a little early today so you guys can get here and help out please? The house looks like a war zone and we have everyone coming over tonight…. Zoe says to tell him that he better or he's sleeping on the couch."

"How much earlier, one hour, two, three, four?"

"From Zoe's face, she's thinking four nights again, or at least three."

"Right, we'll get moving as soon as we can, see you soon Sweetheart."

"You better! Love you too Honey, bye."

Chuck called Marco and asked him to bring Mike, Rick, Vinnie, Javier and Rob to the Dungeon, then headed down there himself.

* * *

He summarised what Sarah had said and informed them that they were heading out straight away. Chuck asked Marco if he could pick up the meat for a barbecue for forty five people, but Mike burst out laughing at the look of confusion on Marco's face and told him that he had it, but told Marco that he was coming to the butcher's to help him collect it. When everyone was clear on what they were doing, Chuck went to meet Vinnie in the garage. They couldn't use the type of machines that they really liked for a mission like this, so Chuck had grabbed the Nissan Stagea RS260 for this mission. Other than the bigger wheels and tyres, the fact that the station wagon actually had a race spec GT-R drive train under it didn't show at all. It was like the Evo that they'd set up for Anna, in that the average person had no idea what it could do, and it fit the image of what a young guy would get when he was forced to give in and drive a family car.

As Mike and Marco had the meat covered, Chuck went to the grocer's to quickly pick up the rest the items on the shopping list with Vinnie, then he had Vinnie hanging on for grim death on the trip 'home' from there, because he was anxious to reassure himself that Sarah was OK. As a result, they beat everybody except for Rick there, as he'd been having fun on Casey's modified Harley, and he'd only just arrived when they got there.

The first thing Chuck did when he arrived was go in to see Sarah, only then did he go back out to help Vinnie and Rick get the groceries out of the wagon, Sarah, Carina and Zondra came with him to help, after all, Carina and Zondra had to greet their 'husbands' too.

Javier and Marco turned up on Ellie and Chuck's modified Harleys as they were unloading the wagon, so they helped carry things inside, greeting their 'wives', then Rob in the Volvo, and finally Mike in Casey's Crown Vic. Once everything had been brought inside, the men took over the unpacking while the women started getting the food ready for the barbecue.

Casey, or rather Jim, came through from the kitchen laughing one time, and when the guy guys asked what he was laughing about, he said that Gertie, Ilsa and Zoe were winding up Sarah about the fact that it should be Chuck in the kitchen, seeing as he was the cook of the family. Carina and Zondra were trying to stand up for their friend but she was laughing as much as the other women were, because she knew it was true. Her only comeback had been at Zoe because Mike was the cook in their family too, but Zoe just agreed with a laugh.

By the time the locals started turning up, they had all the living areas downstairs unpacked and straightened out, boxes flattened and stashed away and the girls had done the cleaning, upstairs, they only set up a couple of the bedrooms as they didn't intend to be there for long. With fifteen top operatives there, they were confident that they could handle anything that was thrown at them, but more to the point, they didn't miss much.

* * *

It was obvious that the locals weren't at all happy that the 'family' from Chuck's work, and the handyman, were all there for the barbecue. One of the women actually made a comment to Sarah to the effect that this was supposed to be a 'meet the neighbours' barbecue, but Sarah just looked her in the eye and said. "My friends have been there all day, helping me get unpacked, AND put this together and their husbands came to help get the house straightened for this, I'm not going to say 'thanks, now get lost'. If anyone doesn't like it, well they all know where the door is!"

This wasn't enough to change the neighbours' behaviour, and all of the team could see what Sarah had been saying to Chuck earlier, the local husbands were all over Sarah and the local wives were all over Chuck, but they totally ignored the rest of them. It was frustrating for Chuck, because he wasn't flashing on any of them, but it was like Sarah said, they were like evil Stepford wives (and husbands), who were programmed to ONLY go after the Cavenaghs. Carina, Zondra and Dasha were all almost in Sarah's league, but they didn't get a single look from the men, even when Carina and Dasha were flirting outrageously. Similarly, Chuck believed that Casey, Rick, Javier and even Vinnie were more attractive than him, but they didn't get any attention from the women, even though Rick and Javier were using their 'wives' behaviour to sell the fact that they had open marriages and try to get some action.

Unfortunately, this meant that Sarah and Chuck were the only ones who would have any chance of getting information from the locals, so they reluctantly agreed that they'd have to start working them. Sarah stopped giving the husbands the cold shoulder and started being friendly and Chuck pretended to get angry about that and opened up to the wives. They discovered a bug one of the trays that had been brought over and Chuck identified it as belonging to Fulcrum when he flashed on it. They determined that it had been brought over by Sylvia, the rather aggressive cougar from across the street, and Anna and the guys dug up records that showed deliveries of a lot of heavy duty computing equipment to that address, so they needed to get into the house to check it out, which unfortunately made the necessary course of action quite clear.

They had to wait until all the neighbours had gone home and they'd swept the house for bugs before they could talk about it. Casey, as the handyman who'd been invited to stay for the barbecue because of all his hard work, left at the same time as the neighbours and Gertrude, Zoe and Ilsa went home with their 'husbands' then too. Chuck reminded Marco to be careful with his bike and told him that he'd kick his arse if he stacked the bike and hurt Gertie or himself, of course Marco had ridden with a laugh at that, but Gertrude was laughing and having a good time on the back too. That left Chuck and Sarah with Carina, Zondra, Dasha and their 'husbands' to clean up and talk over what they'd found out.

Sarah wasn't happy about the fact that her husband was going to have to seduce the filthy old skank from across the road and she was quite vocal about it. Chuck went to her and held her, whispering that he wouldn't be doing anything with that woman, if worst came to worst, he'd tranq her with one of those twilight darts, put her in bed and leave, he'd convince her that they had sex later.

Sylvia had made a point of telling Chuck that her husband was heading off on another business trip tomorrow, so what they set up was that as soon as Casey was there in the morning, Sarah would go out for a 'day with the girls'. Then, Chuck would go to Sylvia to say that he was sure that she was cheating on him again, and two could play that game, and hopefully he could keep her downstairs to prevent things going too far.

They finished cleaning things up while they were talking, so the other three 'couples' headed off. Carina had Anna's Evo and Zondra had the Honda there, so only Dasha was going back on the back of the Harley. While they were laughing, Javier could see from the look in Chuck's eye that he was quite serious when he told him that he'd kick his arse if he did anything stupid and got Dasha or himself hurt. Ellie's Harley was far less powerful than his, but it had a lot more go than most Harleys and it wouldn't be hard to get in trouble with it. Rick was also told pretty much the same thing, but he already had a bit of an idea of what Casey's Harley could do from the ride over.

* * *

In the morning, Sarah got dressed up and took off in the Stagea after Casey turned up, half an hour later Chuck was knocking on Sylvia's door. He groaned to himself when she opened the door with a hungry smile and asked "The honeymoon's over already is it?", but he went with it, nodding angrily as he said "You saw the way she was carrying on last night. This morning she suddenly tells me that she's going out for a day with the girls and she made way too much effort into looking her best for that! She's gone off to see one of those guys like she used to, I know it! What's good for the goose is good for the gander, right?"

She looked like she was going to devour him as she reached for him, saying "Oh you are SO right lover!" as she dragged him inside and shut the door. Sylvia dragged him into the lounge room and poured him a scotch (obviously she paid attention to what he was drinking the night before) and told him to make himself comfortable while she freshened up "I won't be more than ten minutes, fifteen tops I promise!" and rushed upstairs.

He snorted as he looked at the drink, as if he'd drink anything she gave him, even if (he sniffed the glass) he didn't detect something a little off about it? He waited until he heard the door close upstairs before he started looking, there was a study/office downstairs so he hit that first. After a cursory look at the paperwork, he moved on to the computer. It was secured better than most PCs, but the Piranha had no trouble getting into it.

When he managed to break into the computer, though, he saw a symbol that triggered a partial flash and went to look into it, and 'curiosity killed the cat' flashed through his head as he was caught by the images of the Intersect upload that started flashing on the screen. It must have been a very small upload though as he came to about five or six minutes later with a headache.

Looking at the screen, it had already locked itself again so he quickly put everything back as he'd found it and hurried back to the lounge room, grabbing the glass to pour half of the drink down the sink in the kitchen and return it to where he'd been sitting before calling up the stairs "I've gotta go, something's wrong, I think I'm gunna….." before making a gagging sound and running out the door.

* * *

As soon as he was inside 'his' house he pulled out his phone, quickly confirmed that there were no bugs and called Auntie Di to tell her that they had their confirmation because he'd just been hit with an Intersect upload. She was worried and wanted to make sure he was OK when she heard that but he waved it off, saying that it had only been small, but they had what they needed to justify a strike, so he told her to call it in, then hung up. They had this all set up, the FBI would come in to say that they'd found that there was a terrorist cell in the street and take all the neighbours in to get their statements about everything they knew about Sylvia and her husband.

It was hardly fifteen minutes after Chuck ran out of the house that Sylvia's 'husband's car screeched to a halt in their drive and he ran inside, so obviously he hadn't gone very far on his 'business trip'. Chuck called Auntie Di to tell her about this new development, overriding her when she tried to interrupt him, but while they were talking, the Stagea screeched into THEIR drive. Running for the door, he demanded "What's Sarah doing here?"

"You hung up before I could tell you, we were on a video conference when you called and she ran out as soon as she heard what you said."

Chuck hung up and shoved the phone in his pocket as he ran out to grab Sarah and get her inside where it was safe, but before he reached her, they were both tranqued. When Casey saw that he ran out to drag them inside, but he hardly got three steps from the door before he was taken down too, because as soon as their 'neighbours' had found out what had happened, they went into action like the professionals they were, so they had the front of the Cavenagh house covered by multiple snipers with tranq rifles by the time Sarah arrived.

* * *

The next thing Chuck knew, he was strapped to a chair in a room full of equipment and monitors. Sylvia and the other 'neighbours' were all working around him, setting up the monitoring and testing equipment. He decided to try playing through with the cover, so he asked in a panic what was going on, why was he tied down like this, what was this place and where was his wife? but Sylvia laughed, saying "She's not your wife, Charles, she's a CIA Agent, so I expect that you're one too."

Trying to keep up the act, Chuck kept going. "What are you talking about? Sarah's not CIA, she's my wife, what do you want with me?"

He saw Sarah, handcuffed to a chair in the next room, trying to get free, but one of his neighbours, Brad, answered his question as he finished strapping Chuck's head in place. "You have a very special brain Mr Cavenagh, and we're hoping for great things from you, everybody else we've tried has failed, but I think you'll be the one that works for us."

"What are you talking about?"

Sylvia stepped in again "What you saw on the computer upstairs was part of a program, the CIA developed it originally, but they gave up on it before it reached its true potential. We've taken what they started and we're going succeed where they failed!"

"OK, I'll do whatever you want, but let Sarah go, please?"

Sylvia laughed again "Don't tell me you've actually fallen for her? What, did she tell you that you had a future, that she cared about you? Don't you know that it's all an act? You're just a job to her Charles, nothing she told you about her feelings for you was real!"

Brad laughed as well, saying. "Don't worry, this will help you get over her, if you survive it." He set up the apparatus to force Chuck's eyes open, and with that they all moved off into the next room.

Sylvia's "husband" started something and some screens dropped down in front of Chuck, Sarah tried calling out to him but Sylvia just told her "Don't bother, he can't hear you."

Everyone in the room put sunglasses on, and they put a pair on Sarah as well before Sylvia's 'husband' initiated the program.

When the program finished, Chuck passed out, and as he slumped in the chair they all started abusing Brad, saying that this was just yet another failure of his damned program, until Chuck started to come to.

At that they all rushed in and Sylvia asked him "Do you know where you are Charles?"

Chuck played their game "Beneath the Meadow Branch subdivision in a Fulcrum lab that was built to pursue the Fulcrum initiative."

"What initiative?"

"To properly develop the Intersect program."

Brad was almost jumping up and down as he said "It worked!", but Sylvia looked calculating as she asked "Do you mind if we test your wife next?"

Chuck looked at her with a confused expression, as he said "Wife? I don't have a wife."

They were all slapping each other on the back as they got him out of the chair and started strapping Sarah into it.

All Chuck could think about was to take them out while they were occupied and get Sarah the hell out of there, letting the strike team that was on its way handle anybody who was left, but just before he moved he saw Casey at the control console in the next room.

Chuck had his back to the Fulcrum Agents, so he winked back at him when Casey signalled that he was getting ready to initiate the program, turning to say "Before you start, I'd like to tell Agent Walker something."

Sylvia sniggered "Agent Walker, now we have a name."

Chuck leaned in close to her and whispered "Close your eyes", which made Sarah look over his shoulder to see Casey at the console with the sunglasses on, so she squeezed her eyes shut tight and Chuck pulled her face into his chest to ensure that he blocked her from seeing any of the images.

When he saw Chuck pull Sarah's face into his chest, Casey activated the program.

Even though he'd already been through this OK, Chuck squeezed his eyes shut too, so he only heard the cries and crashing going on around him, but as soon as the flickering through his eyelids stopped, he opened his eyes to look around and saw all the Fulcrum people laying twisted on the floor, most not moving.

When he asked Sarah if she was OK as he was unstrapping her, her response was "Yeah, are you?", looking very relieved when he said "Yeah, I think so", and as soon as he had her free she leapt into his arms.

Casey came into the room to check if they were OK, and Chuck noted his left thumb as he started to answer "Yeah, we're OK, you actually broke your thumb to get out of the cuffs? I didn't think you'd do that."

That made Casey look at his hand and wince. "It's not something that I want to do again, but it did the job."

After that they went through the facility, taking down and securing anyone else they found while they were waiting for the FBI to arrive. As soon as they'd dealt with the people, Sarah grabbed a first aid kit to strap up Casey's hand while Chuck searched for any instances of the Fulcrum Intersect information and pulled out any and all the drives holding that information, stashing them in a bag. He also collected any external drives or USB sticks he could find in the facility and added them to the bag, too.

When the FBI arrived, they handed everything but the Intersect information over to them, ordering them to secure everything in the facility and take anyone else they found in the street into custody. As soon as that was all in hand, they took the bag with the drives and headed back to the Castle in the Stagea. Once back at the Castle, Ellie's first order of business was to tend to Casey, then she forced Chuck to go through the first of many batteries of tests to determine what uploading the Fulcrum Intersect had done to him.


	13. Brits, Lies and Videotape

**Some won't like the portrayal of Cole Barker, but this is pretty close to how he behaved at the start.**

 **Shorter chapter this time.**

 **Usual disclaimers, no rights to any characters portrayed, this isn't the real world and it's not a Disney Princess story.**

Pasadena – January 2009

Chuck wasn't crazy enough to try and argue against the daily testing regimen that Ellie was putting him though, even though it was knocking him about more than the Fulcrum Intersect was, because he knew that she was trying to look after him, and that she, like everyone else in his life, was terrified about what this new Intersect in his head may do to him. Things only got more hectic when Stephen and Leslie flew in to work with Ellie on this. Stephen was the original designer of the Intersect, and Leslie had done more to advance the design than anyone else ever had, so they could quite rightly be called the greatest authorities on the Intersect.

As well as the designers, they had the only person who'd ever had the capacity to host the intersect without overloading his brain, and who was himself a brilliant designer and far better coder than either of them, along with a couple more coding geniuses and a far more creative and brilliant neurologist than had ever been associated with any Intersect Program. If you added in the fact that they also had the complete image of two separate operational Intersects, no-one else could possibly be in a better position to fix any Intersect issues for Chuck, and more to the point, for his father, who was more damaged by the one Intersect that he had in his head than Chuck was by the three that he had in his.

Stephen, Leslie, Ellie, Chuck, Anna and Jeff had been dissecting the CIA/NSA Intersect code since Diane took the only surviving complete copy of the Final Operational Intersect from the Intersect Facility as part of the evidence for her investigation. There was little difference from the one that Larkin sent to Chuck, but there were some notable improvements. They were using this, and combining it with Stephen and Leslie's Intersect knowledge, Ellie's neurology expertise and Chuck, Anna and Jeff's superior coding skills to improve what the government had had.

When they acquired the Fulcrum Intersect, they had to step back and have a good, hard look at it, because while it was seriously flawed in some areas (and part of that may have been related to the fact that their starting point for those elements had come from the damaged cipher etc that had been recovered from the destruction of the Intersect Facility that Larkin destroyed), but there were other areas that went far beyond the CIA/NSA version. It appeared that Bradley White, though an irritating, sick bastard, may have had a few flashes of brilliance. Of course, no-one questioned the fact that White being fried by his own Intersect was poetic justice.

While they were very excited about the advances they were making to the Intersect design, and in particular the fundamental changes that Ellie was instigating through her neurology input, they had other responsibilities which meant that their work on this had to be put aside regularly. While their Carmichael/Fox business requirements and Special Projects work took them away from working on the Intersect, the biggest disruptions were usually the Intersect team missions, such as the one they were engaged for just before Ellie's thirty first birthday.

* * *

Downtown L.A. - February 2009

Neither Chuck or Diane were happy about this mission, Chuck because someone else was the one in the position of risk, and Diane because it was her only daughter. They'd been engaged by the CIA, but Jane had subtly indicated that she believed that while the mission was genuine, the way it was presented was a set up, because there was really only one way to approach it, as a seduction mission. They knew where and where the mark was supposed to be delivering the mission objective to Fulcrum, in the bar at a downtown hotel that night, but they had to get the intel and get out without Fulcrum realising that they had.

Coming from the Acting DCIA and his cronies, there had been little doubt that this was another attempt to push Sarah into a seduction mission, and they were discussing how they'd turn it down when Dasha spoke up "I'll do it." Diane started to say quickly "No, we don't do these..." but Dasha cut her off.

"General, Director Bentley has indicated that the intel is that the mission objective is highly important, so I do not believe that we can afford not to make our best effort to recover it. I am aware that our team tries to steer clear of these sorts of missions and I'm quite happy about that as a general rule, but I believe that this one may be worth making an exception. I appreciate your concern, but I can handle it, the fact is my own mother has pretty much disowned me because I apparently take after my oversexed father too much, so I can take one for the team here to achieve our mission objective."

While Jane was looking from one to the other, trying to work out what was going on and Diane was trying to regain her composure enough to respond, Chuck spoke up "We'll ONLY take this path if we can set it up to ensure that you won't be in the position where sex is unavoidable, otherwise we'll be aborting it! If it comes to that, we'll go in hot and take the mark by force. It will be more difficult to get the information out of him that way, but we can manage. "

Dasha looked him in the eye, initially challenging him like she was her mother, but tears started in her eyes as she nodded. Chuck looked at Diane's image and she also nodded with a tear in her eye. Chuck had given Diane the time she needed to pull herself together enough to respond. "Are those terms acceptable to you Director Bentley? If we can set it up so that we can guarantee that our operative will not be forced to have sex with the mark, we will go forward with the specified approach, otherwise we will abort that and take an alternative approach."

Jane nodded, clearly wishing that she knew what was going on here. "Yes General I accept this amendment. I am more comfortable with this approach personally, so I'll send you a communication to that effect." With that she said goodbye and cut the link.

Chuck stood up and walked out of the room, stopping only to quietly tell Dasha "That was cruel and she didn't deserve it, you know damned well that she doesn't think of you that way. Maybe you should find out about what she's had to do and consider the fact that she's trying to protect you from having to before you lash out at her."

* * *

The others left as well, leaving Dasha to have a tearful heart to heart with her mother for the next half hour, which resulted in Dasha apologising for what she'd said and Diane promising to try and stop using her default response of 'You're just like your father' whenever she was frustrated with her daughter. While they were baring their souls to each other, Dasha also told her mother that she was sleeping with her boss.

Diane was shocked as she gasped "Dasha, No! Surely Chuck wouldn't cheat on Sarah?"

Dasha smiled through her tears as she shook her head "No, I don't think he could Mom, I'm talking about Anna."

Diane's relief at that was obvious, and she smiled "Don't do that to me Honey, you made me doubt the one thing I held absolute for a moment when I thought that he had cheated on her."

"Wait a minute, so you're OK with me sleeping with Anna, but not Chuck?"

"Honey, I want you to be happy, and quite frankly, if you're with Anna I won't be always worried about what might happen to you, going home with random men, but the thought of anything breaking those two up after they'd been kept apart for eighteen years horrified me. So yes, if you're happy with Anna I'm happy for you, but I would have been very disappointed with you if you'd managed to get Chuck to cheat on Sarah."

"Who are you and what have you done with my straight laced mother?"

"Well I did have a daughter to a man who'll never marry me while we were both KGB sleeper agents establishing ourselves inside the American intelligence community. Seriously Honey, I was an American college student in the free love period of the nineteen seventies, I'm pretty sure that I've been with women more than you have, more men too for that matter, even if I did keep going back to your father."

Dasha laughed at that, but turned serious as she remembered what Chuck has said to her. "Mom, Chuck said some things about what you had to do, how bad was it?"

Diane sobered up at the change of subject "I don't believe that I had it anywhere near as bad as Carina did, but it was pretty bad some times, I don't want you ever to know what that's like. That was why I could have kissed Chuck when he went behind my back to get you in here where you'd be safer. Please promise me that you'll signal them to get you out if this starts to get out of hand!"

Dasha nodded "I promise Mom, but how will we get what we need if that happens?"

"We'll turn them over to Mary, she knows ways to make people talk that people here can't comprehend, don't worry, we'll get what we need. There's no reason for any heroics from you Honey, not that sort."

* * *

That was why Chuck was sitting at the bar with Dasha now, waiting for the mark. Sarah was sitting over with Zondra and Vinnie and Casey was behind the bar. They also had a dozen of the shadow team upstairs, ready to move in.

Casey saw the mark enter and signalled them, and they started a dialogue that quickly ended with Dasha grabbing her drink and stalking off. She sat down near the mark and basically asked him to shield her from that dweeb at the bar. At that, he just looked at his watch and started his spiel, and he was so full of himself that he didn't see anything at all suspicious when she agreed to go to his room within five minutes. His whole plan was obviously to take her up to his room for a quick screw and be back in time for his meeting with the Fulcrum agents, such a charmer he was.

As soon as Dasha left the bar with the mark, Chuck, Sarah, Zondra and Vinnie followed them, but they ran into a complication when Chuck flashed on the Fulcrum agents who were coming to get what the mark had (luckily the Fulcrum Database he uploaded had included all of their agents) as they were heading for the lift, so Chuck pointed them out to Zondra and Vinnie and sent them back in to keep an eye on them while he and Sarah went after Dasha and the mark. In the elevator, Chuck called to send one of their four man teams down to support Casey, Zondra and Vinnie on the bar floor and put the others on alert.

Outside the mark's room, Sarah picked the lock and then they waited as they listened to the feed from Dasha's mic. They weren't happy with what they were hearing, but they forced themselves to wait until Dasha said 'Cristal' before they burst into the room. The second she uttered the word, they were inside, and the sight of Dasha in her underwear with her hands tied almost got the mark shot then and there.

Chuck swapped the modified Type 67 silent pistol for the pistol Sarah had taken from her clutch so that she could shoot the mark without alerting anyone if she had to while he untied Dasha. As he removed the belt that was used to tie her hands, Chuck flashed on the belt buckle and smiled at Sarah, holding it up, as that was what they were there for.

The mark's ego was still running rampant, because he was actually trying to chat up Sarah while she was holding him at gunpoint. As soon as Dasha had her dress back on and had straightened herself out a bit, they turned for the door, but the mark tried to grab the belt off of Chuck, so Sarah kneecapped him, then Chuck put him out with one punch.

When she saw the ball gag and ropes that he had out to use on Dasha, Sarah couldn't control herself any longer so she walked up to kick him in the side, breaking two or three ribs. Then she decided that they needed to secure the prisoner properly and used those ropes for the purpose. The fact that she knew how to truss him up in approved B&D fashion worried Chuck, as he knew that wasn't anything she'd be involved in by choice, but in under five minutes the mark was trussed up with the ball gag in his mouth.

That was when they heard that the Fulcrum agents were on their way up, so they quickly departed, locking the door behind them, and piled into the lift, calling for the shadow team to take them, alive if they could, and the Brit in the room as well. They cleared out of the hotel, leaving Casey, Zondra and Vinnie to direct the shadow team. The Fulcrum agents tried to shoot it out, so the shadow team had to put three of them down, which meant that they ended up handing three dead, and three live but damaged bodies over to the L.A. FBI office.

While they were heading downstairs, Chuck angrily demanded to know why Dasha hadn't called them in earlier, as it had obviously gotten out of hand. She was a mixture of defiant and apologetic as she said that she'd accepted the dress coming off as part of what was going on as she was still confident of controlling the situation, it was only when he suddenly tied her hands that it got out of control and that was when she called for them. Sarah put her hand on Chuck's arm to calm him down, and look she gave him was saying that she would have handled that situation the same way Dasha had, so he backed down at that. Dasha hugged him and kissed him on the cheek, because she knew that he'd just been afraid for her.

* * *

Chuck, with Stephen and Leslie's assistance (like he had any choice in the matter) extracted what was on the chip that had been in the mark's belt buckle, and when he did, they knew that they were in trouble, because it was all the results and videos of the Intersect testing that had been done on Chuck back at Fort Meade. They kept that chip and sent a doctored copy that was made to look like the original but didn't include anything that was sensitive or identified Chuck or the team to the CIA, then they went to have a 'talk' to the mark.

The had a fair deal of leeway with the local FBI office as the Special Agent in Charge there knew that they had the support of the DNI, and the Director of the FBI, but their expressions when they came in this time meant that it took a bit to talk him around before he let Chuck and Mary take the prisoner into a closed room to question him without any external recordings. The mark's claims of being Cole Barker, a British SIS and the operation being conducted with the CIA were interesting, but that would be handled as a separate matter. He wasn't inclined to be forthcoming with any more information until Mary started working on him, but he went from 'I won't tell you a thing' to singing like a bird quite quickly after that.

What he told them supported his story, but it raised all sorts of problems, and angered both Chuck and Mary quite a bit. "The CIA discovered that the chip had been sold to Fulcrum and intercepted it, but the Fulcrum agent had been killed when they tried to take him. They couldn't decrypt the chip, but knew that it was meant to go to senior people in Fulcrum, so they made arrangements with our people for one of our agents, me obviously, who couldn't be identified by Fulcrum to act as the courier to deliver the chip so that I could identify the senior Fulcrum people I was handing it off to. Just before I got to the hotel for the meet, I was told that arrangements had changed and that Fulcrum would be sending someone else to collect the chip. I reported that to the CIA people handling the operation and was told to proceed as planned."

Mary asked "Who in the CIA made the arrangements with the SIS?" The man shook his head "I don't know for sure, but the arrangements were made with the Chief of the SIS so I presume that it must have been the Director of the CIA." Mary looked at Chuck and nodded, so Chuck addressed 'Barker'.

"We will investigate this and if we find what you've told us is true, you will be sent back to England, if you're lying to us you'll go to a black site with the other Fulcrum agents and never be heard of again. Just so you know, if you're telling the truth you won't be popular with your boss, as he's going to be in a lot of trouble over this, I thought he learnt his lesson last time, but apparently not."

With that, they turned off the recording devices, packed up their equipment and left. The mark started complaining that he needed medical attention and saying that they'd pay for this, so Chuck turned back. The man knew that he was looking death in the face so he shut up as Chuck started talking.

"What were you planning on doing with that agent?"

"I, I thought she was Fulcrum, so I was going to delay her until assistance arrived."

"Delay her by tying her up and raping her."

The idiot smirked at that "Oh it wouldn't have been rape, all agents know that sex on missions happens all the time and I can assure you she would have had a good time."

Chuck poked his finger into one of the spots that Mary had been working on, hard so the tool's face twisted in pain. "When a woman is demanding that you let her go and trying to stop you tying her up it IS rape you bastard, especially when she aborts the mission as the only way of getting out of it. For your information, that woman is a friend of our's, so it was VERY hard for us not to kill you when we came into the room and saw her like that. You better shut up before I decide to save American taxpayer dollars and finish the job right now!"

This time the man kept his mouth shut as they left the room.

What Chuck hadn't realised was that Mary had turned the recording device back on when he turned back to answer the man, so they had that on the end of the recording.

* * *

When they got back to the Castle, they filled Diane in on what they'd discovered and prepped the jet for Chuck to take the recordings to Washington, along with the details of what was on both chips. Sarah, Casey and Dasha went with him. In their meeting with Diane and the DNI, they filled him in on the history of secret deals between the CIA and British SIS, and also on the actions of the Acting Director of the CIA, letting him confirm the details from the files that he'd inherited from the previous DNI. When he'd looked at what was in the files, the DNI also called in Mike to get it first hand from him.

They had a video-conference with Jane Bentley and she reported everything she'd been given to engage the Intersect team, and then they played the recording from the questioning. The DNI accepted the response that the woman doing the questioning was an NSA interrogator and didn't comment on the fact that the methods used obviously weren't according to the rules, but he, like everyone else, got angrier as the recording played, especially at the discussion Chuck had with the SIS agent at the end.

Diane was furious when she heard that part of the recording, this confused the DNI, so when Mike gave her and Dasha looks requesting permission to tell the DNI, they nodded. Mike turned to his successor and said "Dennis, Captain Rodya is actually General Beckman's daughter. Diane was young and alone when she had her, and she agreed for Fiona to be adopted by friends of her's so that she could have a more normal life. Knowing that, you can understand why this goes beyond the outrage that you'd expect from her hearing someone casually discussing raping one of her agents."

The DNI nodded "Yes, I can quite understand Mike, but I must say that I am disappointed that the General would breach protocol so far as to get her daughter under her control like…."

Chuck interrupted him "She didn't sir, I did, I prepared the case and presented it to the then DNI without the General's knowledge."

The DNI raised an eyebrow at Mike, who nodded, adding that the paperwork to show that Captain Rodya was a good choice for the Intersect team was in the files. The DNI nodded at that and let it go, then said.

"We'll obviously have to take this to the President, as there are several serious breaches of security and protocol." He stopped and looked at Diane. "I'm not referring to your daughter there General." He looked back at the group "Do we have any idea of what is on the chip that went back to the CIA?"

Chuck went to answer, then glanced at the screen and the DNI caught his meaning, apologising to Jane but telling her that he'd have to disconnect her link now, she nodded, understanding, just asking if she could be advised where this would be going. He assured her of that and thanked her for her assistance.

When it was down to the people who were cleared to know, Chuck told him what was on the chip that the CIA had, but more to the point, what was on the chip that had been going to Fulcrum. When the DNI exploded about how irresponsible it was to deliver something to Fulcrum without knowing now sensitive what was on it may be, Mike told him about the information on the other chip that had almost gone to Fulcrum because the Acting Director of the CIA had been determined to keep it as a CIA only operation.

With that, the Acting Director was summoned to the DNI's office, while at Chuck's suggestion, the President was filled in on all the salient details and linked in via a blind video-conference so that he could see and hear everything that happened in the meeting.

* * *

When Gordon arrived to see the Intersect team there, he demanded to know what they were doing there, but shut up when the DNI barked "You're here to answer questions, not demand anything Gordon!"

At first Gordon denied any knowledge of what they were asking, until the DNI suggested that they get the Chief of the British SIS on the line, at which point he buckled and admitted that what they had recounted was essentially correct.

When the DNI demanded to know why the Intersect team hadn't been given the full details of the case ('Again!', Mike interjected), he got belligerent and said that they had no need to be filled in on the details of a CIA operation, they just had to recover the chip. The DNI went ballistic at that "WHAT? If the agent had been given the proper details she could have identified herself to the SIS agent, who should never have been operating on U.S. soil anyway, and just had him hand over the chip. Because of the false intel they were given, she had to handle it as if he was a mark and the operation had to remain covert, so she almost got raped and the chip may have been lost!"

Gordon smirked "It would hardly have been rape sir, and an agent of Walker's reputation should have been able to recover the chip without problems."

The DNI looked at him in disgust "You're unfit to hold your position Gordon. Given that you were ready to deliver that chip to Fulcrum anyway, why did you engage the Intersect team to recover it?"

Gordon obviously didn't want to answer until the DNI barked "Well?"

"We planned to have the agent contact Fulcrum to say that their people must have been followed as the meet was compromised, in hope that we could get another chance of identifying the senior Fulcrum people. We didn't have a suitable team in Los Angeles so we engaged them to intercept it. Where is the SIS agent anyway? He hasn't reported to us or his superiors since that operation, I presumed that as Walker's here, he would be too?"

"He's in custody in Los Angeles, where he'll stay until he's deported to the UK, and will never be allowed on U.S. soil again."

"What, you can't do that! He's a friendly operative working on a joint operation with us."

The DNI stared him down. "No Gordon, as far as our people are concerned, he was an enemy agent who was preparing to rape a United States Federal Agent and was injured in his capture as a result of that. No-one with the proper authority had made any agreement with the British SIS, nor had they approved any operation of this nature, so this agent was, and is, regarded as an enemy combatant."

"That's not correct Sir, I authorised the operation with the SIS."

"You really do need to get your hearing checked Gordon, as I just told you NO-ONE WITH THE PROPER AUTHORITY. You had no authority to make any agreements with any foreign organisations, and I believe that that was included in the paperwork that you signed to say that you'd read and agreed to when you accepted the acting role?" He looked at Mike, who nodded. "So as I said, no-one with the authority to do so authorised this and he was operating on U.S. soil as an enemy agent, so he will be treated as one."

"Now, the CIA is obviously not prepared to protect whatever government information is on this chip that was recovered, given that you were actually handing it over to Fulcrum, so I am hereby ordering you to deliver it to me immediately."

Gordon looked as though he wanted to be somewhere else "Ah, that's not possible at the moment Sir, the chip disappeared after we took delivery of it. I'm sure that it's just been misfiled, but we have no idea where it is at the moment."

The DNI clenched his fists as he tried to control himself. "So you're telling me that after an operation that was made exceedingly dangerous by the incomplete information given was handled on behalf of the CIA by another group, when they returned the chip with unknown government information to you, you LOST it?"

"Yes Sir, but we do know what was on it, it's just unimportant test information from over a year ago."

"What test information, precisely? And how do we know that it's unimportant?"

"I don't know it was exactly, someone from where it was stolen from told us that as far as they could remember it was just some random tests."

"I see, but if it was just some unimportant random test information, why would Fulcrum be so interested in it that it was being delivered directly to senior Fulcrum people? Did you look at what was on the chip?"

"No Sir, our people couldn't break the encryption."

"So they used encryption too strong for the CIA to break, and it was going directly to senior people in Fulcrum, but you took the word of someone where it came from that as far as they remembered it shouldn't be important? Why didn't you contact your superior, that is, ME, to inform him of your plan and get direction on what to do, or at least get the chip decrypted so that we knew what was actually going to be handed over to Fulcrum?"

"I didn't think that that was necessary Sir, this was under the purview of my position as the Director of the CIA..."

The DNI cut him off "No Gordon, that authority is NOT under the purview of the Director of the Fucking CIA, and it's certainly not under the purview of someone ACTING in the role who's obviously incapable of understanding most of the issues that are involved here. My predecessor (waving to Mike) has informed me that this is not the first time that you've done something like this, and that you were informed of your duties last time. You better find that chip and get it to me ASAP, because if Fulcrum has it, and they access any important government information from it, you'll be facing treason charges, do you understand?"

Gordon looked like he was about to faint and whispered "Yes, Sir."

When the DNI snapped "Get out of my sight!" and waved at the door, he didn't have to be told twice and scampered out.

* * *

When the room was sealed and the controls in place, they brought up the president on the screen and the DNI asked "Did you get all of that sir?"

The President nodded, obviously disturbed "Yes Dennis, how did a man like that get into the position of Acting Director of the CIA?"

Mike spoke up "I had the team look into that after the last incident Mister President, would you like to know what they found?"

The President nodded and said "Yes, please" and Mike waved at Chuck. Chuck summarised it in about ten to fifteen minutes and then Mike explained how they'd tried to get rid of him after the last time but they couldn't get the support in the senate to do so.

Then the President raised the fact that Fulcrum obviously had the chip, and wanted to go over just what they'd get if they could decrypt it, as well as what was on the original and how secure it was. Once again, Chuck was called to give all the details of the contents of the two chips and how the original was secured.

With that out of the way, they went into the matter of the agreement Gordon had made with the Chief of the SIS and Mike gave the President the information he needed to dig up his predecessor's records of what happened when Graham was making agreements with them. It was quickly agreed that the President would take the matter up with the British Prime Minister and then they'd ship Barker back in disgrace, banning him from ever entering the United States again.

When they'd addressed the current matter, they went back to the bigger problem, the Acting Director of the CIA. They spent some time going through his actions since he was appointed after Graham died in the Intersect facility, including his almost certain involvement in that set up down in Rio a few months ago. The President raised a point that they hadn't factored in last time, that they needed to have a suitable replacement available to step into the role if they did get rid of him, otherwise they could get something even worse in his place, as hard as that was to imagine.

The President and the past and present DNI just looked confused when Sarah blurted out "Aunt Jane!" even though Diane and Chuck agreed emphatically, so Sarah got embarrassed and explained. "Sorry sir, sirs, I'm referring to the Director of the National Clandestine Service, Jane Bentley, Mister President. Ms Bentley was my handler through most of my training and up until I finished at Harvard. She also became my mentor after I graduated from Harvard and became a full agent. I was living with her while I was at Harvard and her cover was as my Aunt, so I got used to calling her Aunt Jane. I believe that if you review her records you'll agree that she's the most capable person to assume the role of the Director of the CIA, and I have to say that she has far more integrity than anyone else at that level as well."

Diane looked at Chuck, but he just waved to her, as she had the rank to be listened to. "I agree Mister President, I cannot think of a better person to handle the reins with competence and integrity than Director Bentley."

The President was looking thoughtful and making notes, but he surprised them when he said. "Mister Bartowski, I've already seen enough to know that between the Intersect and your natural ability, you have all the relevant the facts in your head on most matters, would you give me a rundown on Director Bentley, and also your impressions of her please?"

Chuck nodded saying "Yes, Sir" and launching into a forty minute rendition of Jane Bentley's career, finishing with the reasons why he regarded her as 'the best man for the job'. When he was done, the President thanked him and nodded thoughtfully, he spent a minute thinking and then said "Dennis, can you get Director Bentley to come to a meeting at the White House ASAP, please? You need to stress that no-one in the CIA can know where she's going of course. When you've sorted that out, I want all of you, yes, you too Mike, to come over here for the meeting. Captain Rodya, you're already aware of what's going on, so you're part of this as well."

The DNI said that he'd get it organised and the President disconnected, then he called Jane, stressing the speed and secrecy requirements before calling for a shuttle to get them there in time as well.

That was how they all ended up in the Oval Office a little over twenty minutes later. The President, the DNI and Jane were bemused when Diane pulled out and activated her special bug killers, but Mike waved for them to let her do it, remembering the discussions they'd had in his, now Dennis's, office.

The President started with a rundown of the issues with the Acting Director of the CIA, calling in the others to fill in details where required, but that didn't take long as she'd been involved in many of the events, then he launched into the primary purpose of the meeting.

"Director Bentley, it has been made quite apparent to me that we need to replace the Acting Director of the CIA with someone who possesses the competence, intelligence and integrity needed to hold a role of this nature. You have been proposed by Agent Walker, General Beckman and Mister Bartowski as the only person who meets all of the criteria and Mister Bartowski, and the others, have provided us with enough information to prove their case. So the question here is, will you accept the responsibilities associated with the role of the Director of the CIA if you are called to fill the role?"

She just stared at him for a minute or more, not able to believe what she was hearing, so he asked again "Director Bentley? Will you accept this role if it is offered to you?"

That broke through and she responded "Oh, I'm sorry Mister President, I was just having a bit of a hard time believing what I heard. Yes Sir, if you chose to offer the role of the Director of the CIA to me, it would be my honour to accept, and I would do my utmost to fulfil the duties and responsibilities associated with the role."

He nodded with a smile "Great, this obviously won't happen overnight, Mike has told us what happened last time they tried to get rid of the man, as he seems to have people behind him for some reason. That being said, we'll get things in place so that when we do manage to get rid of him, Dennis and I will to get you in place as the Acting Director effective immediately, then we'll get your confirmation pushed through the senate. It will be good to have someone that the nation can trust in that chair."

They had to wind the meeting up there, as the President had already been tied up with these matters for a few hours that day, they didn't know how he had managed to free up the time at the spur of the moment like that. Jane had to get back to Langley before anyone started asking questions too, but she managed to have a few minutes with Sarah before she rushed off. Diane came with them to the airport so that she could spend a little more time with Dasha before they flew back to Los Angeles, but before they departed, Chuck asked Diane what the DNI had been referring to when he said something about seeing them soon. She tried to divert the question, but then she gave up and said that she wasn't allowed to say anything about that yet.

As they weren't going to get anything else out of her, they let it go at that and headed back to Los Angeles, though Chuck and Sarah spent most of the trip working, because matters had been coming in that needed to be addressed ever since they left Los Angeles ten hours before.

* * *

Washington - March 2009

As the DNI said, they were all called back to Washington a few weeks later. The fact that the previous DNI was in the office with the current DNI when they arrived was a sign that something was going on, as was the fact that they were each handed uniforms that had been specifically tailored for them and they were told to go and change into them.

When they had all returned to the DNI's office in uniform, they were informed that plans were currently in play which would require each of them to hold military ranks at the requisite levels for them to be able to effectively command cross service groups for upcoming operations, so it was the start of that process that was happening today. They were also informed that they were being awarded the medals that had been withheld from them in the past to strengthen their positions with the military, and help gain the respect of the military people that they would be commanding.

With that, they were bundled off to the White House for a meeting in the Oval Office with the President, Secretaries of Defense, Navy, Air Force and Army, plus the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a few other key top brass from the Services. With a minimum of fuss, they processed the promotions for United States Navy Captain Charles Carmichael, United States Navy Captain Eleanor LaBelle, United States Navy Commander Anna Wu, United States Marine Corps Colonel Alexander Coburn, United States Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Carina Miller, United States Air Force Lieutenant General Diane Beckman, United States Air Force Colonel Sarah Carmichael, United States Air Force Colonel Emma Frost, United States Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Fiona Rodya, United States Army Colonel Mary Frost, and United States Army Lieutenant Colonel Zondra Rizzo.

There were a few looks from the brass who knew Casey as John Casey, but it was quickly explained away as the fact that he'd gone back to his real name, Alexander John Coburn, though he still used Casey or John as his form of address.

Once the promotions were done, a number of medals were awarded to each of them (quite a number for some) for which the recommendations had been in the system for some time without being progressed by the various services' commands.

They also had the inductions into their roles as the commanders or deputy commanders of the various groups and deputy directors of the Special Projects Group and those parts, like the Intersect project, which were significant enough to have their own directors.

After all the formalities had been completed, they all had to have their photo ops with the President and other dignitaries.

Once everything was done, they changed out of their uniforms, packed up and flew back to Los Angeles.


	14. Run, Fatboy, Run

**Don't worry, I haven't packed it in, just been catching up with things and getting stories started over in the 'punk 'verse. I've also been having a trip down memory lane with some of the old stories again, Armadilloi's in particular. Wish I could have met him, from the stories he wrote, I'm betting he would have been one hell of an interesting character.**

 **Usual disclaimers, no rights to any characters portrayed, this isn't the real world and it's not a Disney Princess story.**

Pasadena - April 2009

Now that Dasha had come out to her mother about Anna, they weren't worrying about hiding what they had in the breakfast meetings any more, which was making things more relaxed again. They'd had to get a bigger table in there though, given that the group had almost doubled from the original six, but as Dasha had seen, these unconventional meetings with food, laughter, hugs and kisses were more effective and achieved more than formal meetings did, so no-one was complaining. They tended to take shifts at the cooking now though, with Chuck, Ellie, John and Emma stepping in at different times, and sometimes Vinnie, Sarah and Anna as well, but that worked well as no-one was tied up at the stove all the time.

Their next big operation came out of Chuck keeping up with his nerd cred, as he was looking into Roark Instruments' imminent Roark Instruments Operating System (or RIOS, as it was generally known) release like most nerds, but he got some Intersect flashes that were indicating that it was going to be used by Fulcrum as a distribution mechanism for targeted malware that was intended to collect sensitive government information. While they were discussing this, Chuck, Ellie and the others noted that Stephen was becoming more withdrawn and agitated than he'd been for a while, but they were tied up with what they needed to address this before RIOS was released and just put it down to him being away from D.C. for too long, and him needing to go back to take up his sessions with Dr Dreyfus again.

When they tried to get into the Roark Instruments systems, they found that the security was rather stronger than they expected. When Chuck reported that it wasn't likely that he'd be able to get past the defences to see what was on the systems without setting off alarms from the intrusion detection systems in the time frame that they had available, they had to accept his suggestion that the only way to get what they needed in time was for him to go in and get access from inside. Sarah rejected any suggestion that he was going in alone, but wasn't at all happy when he agreed with her, then turned around to say that the only person who could go in with him was Anna, as only the two of them were in the correct age bracket and had the necessary qualifications, with their degrees Stanford and the ability to fight their way out of trouble.

Sarah took Chuck back to the Keep to 'talk' about this, but eventually gave in to the logic of his argument, so while they were up there they went into the workroom (or rather Dulcinea's Boudoir, as Anna named it) and Chuck brought up the available jobs at RI. As Chuck had expected, coming up to the release of something as big as RIOS, RI was clamouring for qualified people to address the thousand and one issues that were coming up as it deadline drew closer, so he just put in applications for two of the jobs. He wasn't too surprised when they both got calls to come in for interviews immediately within the hour.

They'd both remade themselves into the expected image (using the looks they'd adopted for their PS&T, LSS or CCE jobs), and headed straight to RI in the cheapest looking cars from the pool. Their 'interviews' were sub half hour 'rubber stamp' sessions and they were asked to start immediately, RI was getting desperate. Of course, they could quite understand that, as less than three days from the release, RIOS was full of bugs, and the vast majority of the people their were mediocre at best, but closer to incompetent if you wanted to be brutally honest.

* * *

Glendale - April 2009

As soon as they were inside, they started attaching the remote access devices to the computer networks and security systems and piping out the RIOS source code for Jeff and the others to start wade through it, they also started hacking into the systems and sending out copies of any relevant information on the systems, but they had a problem. This was that they couldn't find anything very incriminating on the RI systems. With the intersect Intel that there was malware inside RIOS that specifically targeted Government systems, they were sure that they'd find evidence of Fulcrum or any other nefarious activities on the systems, so they couldn't understand why they didn't.

While Chuck and Anna were working on the inside, Jeff and the rest of the tech team, including Stephen and Leslie, were searching for the malware in the RIOS source, and they were getting as frustrated as Chuck and Anna were, as they couldn't find any. By the time they got to the day of the release, they were starting to wonder whether the Intersect flash had been wrong, but they'd organised invites to the RIOS release event anyway for Sarah, Carina, Zondra and Dasha, plus Mei Ling, Sydney, Vinnie and Javier, all with their appearances changed enough to stop them attracting too much attention.

As well as the rest of their efforts, Chuck and the others were wading through blueprints, utility usage and everything else for the Roark Instruments buildings, and Chuck was getting more and more aggravated, as he KNEW that he was seeing something wrong here, but he just couldn't put his finger on it.

It didn't help that the more they were involved with Roark Instruments, the more Stephen was getting irrational, going on and on about how Ted Roark had stolen his designs and that was what he'd built his empire and fortune on. Mary explained that Roark had been one of Graham's minions who'd been added to the Omaha Project over Stephen's objections, and that he'd always been making advances to her, until she'd eventually broken his wrist for trying to stick his hand up her skirt. After she'd made it QUITE clear just what she'd do to him if he ever came near her or any of the other women associated with the project again, he'd scampered off to hide whenever he saw her, like the spineless rat that he was. That still didn't explain what Stephen was going on about though, and Stephen didn't seem inclined to tell them anything other than moan and carry on about it.

Most of the remote access devices also contained payloads of particularly virulent malware that would corrupt and wipe out all of the code and storage on any system attached to the networks, and they'd taken a leaf from the book of those who created the Trojan cipher that was used to wipe out the Intersect Facility and added the mechanisms to get through gateways into any other systems connected to the networks. The purpose of this was so that, if they found any evidence that the expected malware WAS in RIOS, and they couldn't halt the release, any of them inside the building at the time of the release could activate the Armageddon devices from their phones. The mechanisms were also coded so that it didn't matter how many signals they received, all it took was one to get through. When the activation signal was received they'd drop any connections to the outside world and release the malware, wiping out and destroying any and all systems within Roark Instruments.

On the morning of the release, they were scanning the copies of the RIOS code that they extracted again and they found the proof that they were after, because overnight, the version that was complied from the 'clean' source had been replaced by one that included malware, even though the source was still free of malware. Jeff and the others jumped onto reverse engineering the code to find out what the malware was meant to do, while Chuck tried to get to Ted Roark to get him to stop the release until it could be cleaned.

As the release time drew closer, Chuck became increasingly suspicious of what was going on in RI, because he kept getting blocked from talking to Roark. Eventually, about ten minutes before the release was meant to happen, he threw caution to the wind and physically pushed his way through to Roark. "Mr Roark, Ted, you have to stop the release! I was looking at the code and there's large amounts of malware in it!"

At that moment, any doubts he may have had about his suspicions went out the window, because the affable, bumbling buffoon disappeared. Roark looked around to ensure that no-one but his people were in earshot, and then barked in a cold, unemotional voice. "Got rid of him before anyone else hears anything! Do it quietly though, and make sure that there's no evidence linking him back to us!"

Two of the guards grabbed him and started hustling him out. Chuck flashed on them when they grabbed him, identifying them as Fulcrum, and kicking himself swept a look over the rest of the crowd around Roark, getting confirmation from the Intersect (presumably Fulcrum's) that nearly all of them were Fulcrum. He presumed that he'd just missed the triggers on the others to confirm their part in it, and while Roark wasn't in the Intersect as Fulcrum, there was enough in the flashes on the others to confirm that he was definitely part of it, and from what he was seeing, Roark was very high in the organisation, of not the boss.

As soon as they were out of sight from anyone else, Chuck took out the two guards who were dragging him away and contacted Sarah, Anna and the others to get out and activate the Armageddon devices as soon as they were out of the building, adding that they only had five minutes to do it! He lied to Sarah, telling her that he was currently leaving the building by another route, because he was going after Roark. He was putting his money on the fact that Roark was the key to bringing down Fulcrum, and he wasn't about to miss his chance of grabbing him.

He took the weapons, access cards and anything else of use or identification from the bodies, stashed them away in an empty room and headed back to where he'd seen Roark as quickly as he could with out attracting attention. The others activated the Armageddon devices before he got all the way back there, and he stopped to activate the infrared mode of the imaging glasses that he was wearing so he could see where he was going. Even with the glasses, having the lights out and smoke everywhere from the fires started by the wiring shorting out, made it hard to see anything.

When he got back to where he'd seen Roark, waiting to go up on stage, he saw Roark being hustled away from the stage, it wasn't hard to identify him, as a six foot four fat man stood out. Chuck kneecapped the man in front of him to trip him up and slow him down, but these must have been his elite guards, because they immediately identified where the shot came from and rained lead down on him. There wasn't much Chuck could do other than watch the guards hustle Roark through a door which somehow still seemed to have active security systems, so as there was no point in shooting the guards once Roark was gone, Chuck just slipped away.

He did stop to drag the two bodies out of the room where he's stashed them and stage them so that they'd appear to have died as a result of the explosions and fires before heading for the foyer. Chuck had an advantage over the hundreds of panicking nerds who were trying to find their way out of the building, in that he could actually see where he was going. As he was heading for the door, he tucked the two handguns he'd taken from the guards into the back of his jeans and pulled his shirt down over them and when he got close to the foyer, started pretending to feel his way along like everyone else.

When he came out of the building though, he knew that he was in trouble, as his wife had heard the fire fight over his mic AFTER he'd supposedly left the building, so she was looking for him and saw him come out the same way they had. Given that he told them that he'd already left by another exit over ten minutes before, before they'd activated the Armageddon devices actually, she wasn't happy at all. She didn't give him a chance to make any excuses, as soon as he came up to her, she slapped him hard enough to loosen his teeth and stormed off. He hadn't had a chance to recover from that before Anna did the same, but from the other side (Sarah was right handed, while Anna was left handed), so he was standing there reeling as they left.

He didn't get any sympathy from any of them, except maybe Sydney and Javier, as the others could all relate to the girls' position. Chuck could too, for that matter, he'd just thought that that would be his best chance to grab Roark and didn't think that he could afford to let it go without trying. Zondra and Vinnie took his keys and pushed him into the car he came in to drive him back to the Castle, but not a word was said on the drive.

* * *

When they to the Castle, Chuck thanked them and then went straight up to the Keep, as he knew that Sarah would have gone up there to be alone. He was slapped another three or four times over the next fifteen to twenty minutes, but her tears and pain hurt him more. When they'd accepted each other's positions and kissed and made up, they went into the boudoir to start a videoconference to inform Auntie Di and the others about Roark's Fulcrum involvement and confirm that they'd stopped RIOS going out.

While they were talking, Chuck suddenly started swearing. They were all shocked at the language he was using, none more so than Ellie, who'd talked to him nearly every day of his life and had never heard him using those words. Eventually Sarah shouted at him to get through, and asked what he was swearing about?

Chuck brought up the utilities usage and heat images of the Roark facility, but while Anna, Jeff and Leslie understood what they were seeing, he had to explain it to the others. "THIS is what wasn't making sense before, I don't know why I couldn't see it! It's so fucking obvious!"

Sarah squeezed his hand "Chuck, what are you talking about?"

He pointed at some charts on the screen "That." He could see from Sarah's, and the faces on the screen that they weren't getting it. "I'm pointing right at it!….." Still nothing. "The power usage is twice what can be explained by the visible portion of Roark industries, and now that the power usage for that side has just about stopped, RI is still using nearly fifty percent of the power it was before."

Chuck drew a circle on the plans "There was an active security door here that Roark was taken through when I was trying to grab him. All the access systems, computers and everything else here (drawing a circle around the area where the Roark Instruments offices and computer rooms were) were fried by the Armageddon devices, so that shouldn't have been possible. For all that, even though I thought it was strange, I didn't stop to question it. I'm an idiot, everything in this part (drawing a circle around the area on the other side of that door) must have totally separate power, networks, everything. And here…" He pointed to another screen with a heat image "While the RI offices are only showing a few hot spots from fires, that area obviously has a lot of serious equipment running, my money's on large computers, in fact….. Fuck! That's an Intersect computer, I'm sure of it! Nothing else is configured quite like that. Anyway, we're going to have to get in there, tonight, before they have time to clear out."

Sarah and the others were shaking their heads, it was so obvious now he'd pointed it out. Well, not the Intersect part but they didn't doubt that he was right about that.

* * *

They laid out the plans for the operation there, but no-one noticed that Stephen had slipped away while they were talking. Afterwards, Mary was tied up in the activities to get the raid organised, so she just presumed that he was working on things in the Novatech labs.

Given that they expected the best of Fulcrum would be in there, they took a team of sixteen of their best into the facility, with another dozen out at the vans with Ellie, as the commander of the operation, and the tech team. They'd also have a few FBI strike teams to provide additional support. Of all of them, Chuck and Mei Ling could be the most stealthy, so it was decide that they'd slip in first, to try and attach the remote access devices to the security system so that Anna and the others could take it over. Mary wasn't at all happy that she was part of the backup team, but she had to concede that if Roark saw her, it could blow the operation.

After the sun went down and the emergency services had packed it in for the day, they went in. The passes that Chuck took form the two guards got them in the door, and they instantly checked for cameras. When Chuck saw the camera sweeping bank towards them, he grabbed Mei Ling and pulled her into the dead zone for the cameras, then hoisted her up to stand on his shoulders when she had what she needed to deal with it in her hands. Standing on Chuck's shoulders, Mei Ling bared the wiring for the Camera and attached the remote access device, staying there until Anna announced that they had control of the cameras and then hopping down so that Chuck could do the same with the security and access systems. Anna's confirmation there was just to unlock the door, so Chuck pulled it open to let the others in.

Anna and the tech team prevented them showing up on the security monitors and warned them whenever anyone was coming as they swept the facility carefully, adding remote access/malware devices when they found good locations to attach them. As the remote access devices became active, Anna and the others started getting into the systems to copy off what they could. Their first priority was the Intersect files, but some were working on getting whatever else they could off the systems at the same time. They still wanted to know where the hell Stephen had gone to, because he was supposed to be working on this as well, but he'd disappeared when they were ready to go.

The directive that they were going with was to put down anyone who attacked them, but capture anyone who they could extract information from if possible. So far, everyone they'd seen went for their guns and/or tried to raise an alarm, so they were put down with shots from the VALs as quickly and quietly as possible.

* * *

When Chuck heard Roark's voice, he signalled the others to be quiet as they came up on his position. He worked his way forward until he could to run a camera around the corner to see what Roark up to, but that showed him another problem, because Roark was talking to Stephen, and they had over twenty heavily armed guards around them. Seeing Chuck's reaction, Sarah knew that they had a new problem, so she came forward to see what had set him off. When the others heard her whisper "Oh fuck no!", they knew that they were in trouble.

Chuck checked the area around the corner to scope out what cover was available and then they retreated down the corridor far enough to fill the others in on the plan of attack. While the others were looking at the recording on the camera, Chuck quietly called to his mother and sister in the van, whispering "I found Dad, he's in here and Roark's got him."

The others grinned at his mother's response "Get him back please Sweetie, so I can kill him!"

When the sniggers died down, Chuck pointed out the points of cover that existed around the corner and they agreed who was going where, and when they were ready, they moved. Some ran to their cover, some slid across the floor, but they were all engaging targets in seconds. The problem was that the guards around Roark and Stephen were geared up for war and they were all wearing heavy ballistic armour, so while the impact of shots to the torso staggered them, they weren't enough to take them down at over a hundred yards.

Roark proved then that the bumbling buffoon was only a facade, because he reacted in seconds, grabbing Stephen and dragging him through the door behind them with about half a dozen of the guards.

As soon as they saw that shots to the torso weren't taking the guards down, they all shifted their aiming points to head and neck shots. The fifteen or who stayed to fight a rear guard action went down within fifteen to twenty seconds after that, but that had given Roark enough time to get out and have the door manually sealed behind him to slow them down.

They wasted ten seconds while Anna tried to release the door then Chuck barked "Blow it!" A few charges took out the primary attachment points then a kick from Chuck sent the remains of one half down the hall. As they ran for the next door, the others looked at each other, thinking about what it would feel like to be on the receiving end of a kick like that and promising themselves not to spar with Chuck again until he'd calmed down.

They went through the next few manually locked doors the same way before they ran into a problem, as they had TWO manually locked doors, as Roark had obviously sent at least one of his men down another corridor to muddy the trail. Chuck just barked for both of them to be blown and told Casey to take half of the team down one corridor while he took the other.

When his group exited the building and came under fire from one position, Chuck realised that he'd chosen the wrong door and called it through to Casey. Mary quickly got Chuck's location and took off running with two of the shadow team, taking the guard who was keeping them pinned down alive in case he could tell them anything useful.

Casey came out at a loading bay that was empty, but smelling vehicle exhaust quite clearly in there he knew that they'd just missed them. He called for Anna to bring up the video from the loading bay to tell them what they were in. Anna left the others to keep sucking off what was on the Fulcrum systems while she brought up the security footage from the loading bay. She could confirm that Roark and Stephen got into one of the two SUVs that left, and could give a good estimate of make, model and colour, but the cameras were far too low resolution to get the license plates, the images just couldn't be cleaned up enough to read what they said.

By this time, Chuck had reached the van and he took over one of the stations, hacking into traffic cam and security cam systems to locate those two SUVs. He was the maestro with this stuff, so Anna left him to it and went back to ensuring that they got everything they could off the Fulcrum systems before they wiped out the facility. The rest of the team had already gone back in to collect whatever physical evidence and external storage that they could find (as well as the cipher) and set thermite and explosive charges on all of the computing and storage systems.

As soon as they'd collected whatever they could off the systems, they were going to trigger the Armageddon devices to wipe out any code and data on the systems and fry what they could, then they were going to set off the thermite and explosive charges. Once they'd finished, nothing left would be recoverable from the Fulcrum systems, which would hopefully mean that they'd destroyed the last of the Intersect systems.

While this was going on, Chuck had picked up the trail of the two SUVs and traced them to where they changed vehicles. By then he'd hacked into the satellite imagery systems and was using them to get visibility of areas where there was no traffic or security camera footage. That was how he identified what vehicles they transferred into, and saw that Roark still had his father with him. The vehicles split up again to muddy the trail more, but Chuck handed off the SUV with two of the guards in it to someone else to track while he stayed with the one that had Roark and his father in it.

He'd also taken over a predator drone by the time they swapped vehicles, as he expected that they'd be heading out of town, so he was watching them via the drone and the satellites when they did so.

When Anna and the others finished getting what they wanted out of the systems, she looked at Chuck, but didn't want to interrupt him while he was tracking Roark and his father, especially as the malicious way he was muttering "Run, Fatboy, Run!" was a little disturbing (as it was ruining her memories of what had been a fun movie for her), so she turned to Ellie. Ellie nodded and drew her thumb across her throat, leaving no doubt as to her orders. Anna told the others to can their links into the facility and then activated the Armageddon devices, waited a minute and triggered the thermite charges, waited another minute and triggered the explosive charges, then she sent the team back in to confirm that everything had been destroyed.

Chuck was still tied up with controlling the drone, satellites and traffic cameras as the SUV with Roark and his father was heading north, so Sarah fastened the seatbelt across her husband's lap and then took the wheel, as they had to get away before anyone came to investigate the explosions in the building and she didn't trust anyone else to drive smoothly enough not to disturb him. Chuck had kissed her distractedly and murmured "Love you" as she strapped him into his seat, and when she softly called "Are you ready Baby?" he nodded, saying "Yes thanks Honey" without looking away from the screens, determined to ensure they didn't lose that fucking SUV.

* * *

Pasedena – April 2009

When they were back in the Castle's parking garage, they plugged the van into the Castle's power and systems and left Chuck, Sarah and Mary there, they knew that Ellie and Casey would handle everything else while they were tracking Stephen. The SUV went through Barstow and suddenly went off road near an abandoned drive in, heading up the arroyo behind it until concealed doors opened to allow it to drive into a tunnel. It only showed up on the heat sensors once it was closed again. The Fulcrum Intersect identified this location at Black Rock, one of their fall back bases.

With Stephen's location locked down, Chuck moved the Predator back to where it was supposed to be and released control of it to the Air Force again after wiping the logs of any record of where it had been or what it had been recording. He set the satellite imagery to keep recording the Black Rock site, then they headed down to the Dungeon, to go to the bathroom and pick up where they left off.

Once he was ensconced in the operations centre, Chuck identified a satellite with ground penetrating radar as well as the other imagery systems he needed and took it over to move it into the correct orbit to capture the Black Rock site properly. He also sent a request for three Super Stallions to bring three SEAL platoons up from Coronado and pick up the team and their equipment on the way through at around 0200.

He suggested that the others try to get some rest while he planned the strike, but he couldn't get Sarah to go further than the couch behind him to take a nap while he worked. Ellie brought him food and coffee and helped him, as she shared his ability to get by with little rest, and wouldn't be part of the team going in either. They made arrangements for the requisite trucks and vans to be waiting for them far enough away from the Black Rock site to ensure that they wouldn't hear the helicopters coming in.

They'd transfer a command unit much like what they used in their control vans into one of the vans and Ellie would run the operation from there, they'd have Anna, Jeff and Skip handling the technical support. The SEAL teams would handle things on the surface and provide backup while they went in. If things got hairy enough down there, the SEALs would join in. Chuck, Sarah, Casey, Carina, Zondra, Dasha and Mary would each go in with three from the shadow team, as they had to go through the facility to locate and extract Stephen and Roark, as well as any other captives and intel they found, because when everyone was out, that site was getting hit with enough bunker busters to ensure that nothing survived.

Everyone was up, fed, watered and briefed in plenty of time to get to the site where they were being picked up before Super Stallions arrived. Chuck, Sarah and Ellie filled in the three SEAL platoon leaders on the plan on the flight up, also mentioning that if everything went to plan, they'd have at least two and possibly more extra passengers for the trip back. They also showed them the ground piercing radar and other imagery that Chuck got with the Air Force satellite that he'd appropriated.

This was a bit of a risk, as while he'd returned it to its regular orbit, scrubbed any records of what he'd done with it and inserted records in the system (in the wrong place) to show that it had actually been diverted off in the OTHER direction for a routine test, if the Navy talked to the Air Force for some reason, the truth would come out. But Chuck's view of things was that they needed the intel to do their jobs and keep their men safe, and there appeared to be a lot more men in the bunker than they'd been expecting, so it wasn't debatable in his book. Besides, these men had worked with Commander Carmichael and his team before, and they were quite aware that just about everything he did was classified above top secret, so he wasn't too worried about them talking.

* * *

Outside Barstow - 0230

The trucks and vans were waiting for them in the appointed place and they quickly manhandled the command unit into the selected van, securing it there before everyone mounted up and they headed for Black Rock. They put their 'command van' out of sight at a location within range of the Remote Access Devices, and released a swarm of drones. The computers in the command unit handled their basic flight functions, so all the humans at the command consoles had to do was direct them when they saw something that required closer attention. Using the drones, they located and mapped out the coverage of all the cameras and security devices on the surface, and identified they best options for getting into the system without detection.

Chuck and Mei Ling went in first again, but the camera where she needed to attach the remote access device was fifteen feet off the ground this time, so they had to add Sarah to their circus act. They slipped into position under the camera, being careful to avoid it or any of the other cameras capturing them. Chuck crouched down and Sarah stood on his shoulders before doing the same so that Mei Ling could clamber up onto HER shoulders. Mei Ling carefully stood up first, then Sarah, and finally Chuck. Sarah marvelled at the way that he rose smoothly and surely as if he didn't have two other people standing on his shoulders, mentally shaking her head at yet more proof of how special her man was.

As soon as Anna confirmed that she had control of the cameras, Mei Ling edged back and hopped down like she had in the Fulcrum facility at Roark Instruments, though she was more careful here as she was twice as high off the ground. Sarah waited until she was clear and then did the same, giving her husband a hug before he hurried over to get the remote access device into the access and security systems. The others converged as he did this, so as soon as Anna took control of the system and opened the hatch under the bouncing pony in the play yard, they started sliding down the ladder into the bunker, using one hand and their feet to brake their descent while they held their weapons in the other hand.

Chuck had Mike and Louie with him, as their team's primary target was Roark, and they'd be tranqing him and carrying him out. The only thing he let slow him down was plugging remote access devices into the network and attaching them to the camera and security wiring as they went. Anna had located Roark using the security cameras and was directing Chuck to his location. As he went, Anna was whispering in his ear that the Fulcrum Roark seemed to be a different kettle of fish to the sleazebag that he played in public, as he was sleeping alone and his quarters were all business, none of the decadence he showed in public.

When they reached his quarters, Chuck slung the VAL and drew a pair of tranq pistols, he wanted to put him under before he could raise an alarm so he wanted to put as many darts as he could into him as quickly as possible. As soon as the others signalled that they were ready, Chuck got Anna to release the door and Mike to throw it open so that he came through the door fast, aiming at the bed. Roark woke instantly and reached for a gun on the bedside table, but Chuck put four darts into his neck in under a second, with at least two getting him in the carotid artery, so he slumped, unconscious, before he reached the side of the bed.

Chuck notified Anna 'FATBOY captured, repeat, FATBOY captured' while the others came in and closed the door. They secured Roark hand and foot and taped his mouth, then they turned over his quarters looking for information. When they found the safe, Chuck got to work cracking it while Mike ripped the drives out of Roark's computer, adding them to the files, phones, laptop and external storage that had already gone into the bag they brought. It didn't take him long to get into the safe, and when he did, he was surprised how big it was and how much was in it. As he was shovelling everything into a bag, he noticed that a lot of the paperwork and designs were in his father's handwriting, but he didn't have time to stop and look at anything.

When they were sure that they'd gotten everything (even going so far as to check the mattress), Chuck and Zoe secured the bags with what they collected across their backs, Mike picked up Roark in a fireman's carry and they headed out once Chuck sent 'FATBOY enroute'. At the ladder, Chuck and Louie went up first to haul Roark up, Mike following to catch him if they slipped, and to get moving as quickly as possible when they got him to the surface. Zoe kept glancing up, and as soon as they pulled Roark through the hatch, she slung her VAL and scampered up the ladder like a monkey, coming through the hatch as Mike was settling Roark across his shoulders again and they took off.

While they were doing this, Mary and her team were collecting Stephen and any information worth getting in his lab, and Sarah and the other four teams were collecting any information and external storage that they could find, taking down and stashing the bodies of anyone they came across. They did find two other scientists there, Howard Busgang and Jonas Zarnow, so they tranqed and secured them and carried them out as well. The fact that Dr Busgang was also locked up seemed to indicate that he was there against his will, while the fact that Zarnow wasn't made him a questionable element.

When Chuck got back to the 'command van', he called for the F-16s with the Bunker Busters, but told them to hold off until he authorised the drop as he still had people inside. He notified the three platoon leaders that the F-16s were on their way and to pull their men back as far as they could while keeping watch on the entrances.

Stephen tried to talk to Chuck when Mary brought him in, but Chuck's response was "Shut up and get out of the way. If any of our people are hurt in this, I'll make you rue the day you were born!"

When Sarah turned up with her team and Dr Busgang, the relief on Chuck's face was palpable, and they threw decorum to the winds as they kissed. None of them were that surprised when Casey's team was the last to leave the bunker, and as soon as they shut the hatch, Chuck stuck his head into the van and asked Anna whether they had everything off the systems? Anna checked with Jeff and Skip and when they agreed that they thought that they had everything of use, Chuck said "Wipe them!" and called for the bombing runs to begin, telling the platoon leaders to get their men further back.

* * *

Five of the SEALs were using laser designators to 'light up' their targets, but it was still damned impressive when the first bunker buster from one F-16 went straight up the narrow tunnel that the SUV had gone into, and then he dropped two more on one diagonal across the bunker while the other F-16 crossed his flight path, slightly higher up, as he dropped two more bunker busters on the other diagonal. They were only small bunker busters, but they were still bunker busters and the concussive force was phenomenal.

The bombs were timed to go up together, and when they did, it was impressive the way the entire area of the bunker and tunnel rose into the air, then settled back down to form a depression. They were quiet for a moment, and then Chuck called Auntie Di and asked her to notify the commander of Fort Irwin to get his unit down here take over the site, and the Director of the FBI to get his team up there to take control. He notified her of the other two they extracted with their primary targets, and their probable status, then cut the call so that she could get things moving.

As they had to wait there for the Army and FBI, Chuck called the Super Stallions in to load them up. Two thirds of the SEALs were still out, watching for anyone who may have managed to get out and were trying to escape, but everyone else was loading the equipment into the Super Stallions while they were waiting.

They'd administered the antidote to Roark, in case they needed him to answer any questions, and he was trying to put on his 'Ted' act again. The girls didn't appreciate the looks he was giving him, so Chuck took the easy way out to stop him, he just cut another length of duct tape and applied it across his eyes. Carina grinned at Chuck, saying "You know that he'll lose his eyebrows and lashes when that tape comes off?"

Chuck shrugged, "If he wants to complain, I'll show him what I was going to do originally, just wrap it around his head a few times. If I do that, he'll lose more than his eyebrows and lashes when we rip it off."

She grinned and stepped up to kiss him on the cheek "I like the way you think Chuckie!"

When everything had been transferred from the trucks and vans to the Super Stallions, they thanked the drivers who'd delivered them and let them get back and try to get some sleep.

Fifteen minutes later, the trucks from the Fort Irwin arrived, but they were surprised to see the Commander of Fort Irwin had come along to see what the hell was going on down here, not who they expected to see at 0350 at all. Chuck respectfully introduced himself, Commander Charles Carmichael United States Navy, and Casey, Lieutenant Colonel John Casey, United States Marine Corps, but advised that he was not at liberty to discuss the operation.

He also explained that they were waiting on a team from the FBI, who would be taking control of the clean up operation. He stopped then, cocking his head and saying "Ah, that's them coming now", which worried the General, because it was five minutes before he could hear the helicopter.

The General looked at Chuck and asked "How the hell did you hear that five minutes ago?" Chuck just smiled "We've been pinned down and desperately waiting to be pulled out of the fire enough times that we're able to pick up the first hint of the sound of a Black Hawk General." A very impressed General shook hands with both of them and went to oversee his people taking over from the SEALs and Casey snorted when he was out of earshot.

"You've never waited to be extracted in the time we've worked together, you had an ap on your phone alert you when the FBI's Black Hawk was approaching, didn't you?"

Chuck grinned at him "Hey, it makes the regulars feel a bit of kinship with us if they think we do things the way they do, and it was easier than having him standing here, asking us questions."

When the FBI's Black Hawk landed, Chuck officially handed over the site to them and they departed with the SEALs. Half an hour later, they touched down in the park where they'd picked up the team and they quickly off loaded everything, thanking the SEALs and aircrews and waving them off. They were back at the Castle in less than twenty minutes, passing the cops who were coming to investigate more reports of helicopters in the middle of the night on the way.

* * *

In the Dungeon, they apologised to Dr Busgang, but told him he'd have to stay in custody until his story was confirmed. He was philosophical about it, as he was a lot more comfortable now and he wasn't afraid of these people, they weren't at all like Roark's people. Zarnow wasn't given any explanation, he had the tape ripped off his mouth, taking a few chunks of skin with it, then he was thrown in a cell and locked in.

Roark didn't go to a cell, he went straight into an interrogation room. At first he was hopeful when his restraints were removed, but his arms and legs were strapped to a chair and then he heard the ones who'd strapped him in leave. He heard lighter footsteps entering, but they stopped beside him for a while as though whoever it was was looking at him.

Suddenly the tape was ripped from his eyes, taking his eyebrows and lashes and fair bit of skin with it, as that woman had been saying. He was trying to tell the bastard what he thought of them, trying being the operative word as his mouth was still taped up, but he froze when his vision cleared enough to see who it was, because it was Mary Fucking Jaworski! That bitch had terrified him a long time before Graham had his fun telling him all the things she'd done as the KGB's infamous Frost Queen. The fact that she was wearing a plastic coverall, and rubber gloves and safety glasses, with a face mask hanging around her neck just made him more terrified, because that gave him a pretty good idea of what she was going to so to him.

Mary gave him and evil smile "Hello Ted" She looked down at what had started dripping off the chair he was strapped to and the smile broadened "I see you remember me then?" "Oh, I'm sorry, I guess it's hard to talk with this on." With that, she ripped the tape off his mouth, tearing more skin away. "Now, we're going to have a little talk, and you're going to tell me everything I want to know. Because if you don't Ted, I'm likely to get angry."

She leaned in a little and said quietly "Don't make me angry Ted, you wouldn't like me when I'm angry." He just looked at her, horrified and she laughed, shaking her head "Oh come on Ted, don't tell me you didn't like The Hulk? Stephen used to make we watch re-runs all the time, I thought all of you crowd were into it?"

Roark stared at her, thinking 'I'm going to die, this bitch is as much of a psychopath as Volkoff is!'

Mary questioned him for over an hour, and she didn't have to hurt him much to get him to start talking again when he tried to clam up, because he was terrified of her. When someone came into the room, Mary spun to abuse whoever had interrupted her when she was working and Roark got even more terrified, because she was furious as she started to turn, but his whimpering litany of "I'm going to die, I'm going to die" stopped when she registered who it was and her face softened.

His relief was short lived, as he realised that it was the one who was the commander of this operation, and his eyes had terrified him as well, as had his voice as he'd explained to that woman what he'd do to him if he said anything about having his eyes taped over. When she turned around and said "You remember Charlie, don't you Ted, my baby boy?" Roark's blood ran cold, 'Oh fuck! They're both psychopaths! If she doesn't kill me, he will!'

The man, Charlie, whispered in her ear, and the smile on her face turned grim. She stretched up to kiss him on the cheek and then pushed him towards the door "Go, you don't want to see this Sweetie!" He bent down to kiss her on the cheek and whispered something else in her ear. She nodded and pushed him towards the door again before moving back to the chair that Roark was tied to.

He thought she was frightening enough when this seemed to be some sort of crazy game to her, but he was now realising that he had been seeing her nice side then. NOW he thought he understood the name she was given, because the look she fixed on him gave him the feeling that she was seeing him as a frozen corpse. "Tell me about how you took all of Stephen's designs and inventions and used them to make your fortune."

Half an hour later, she had his confession which, with the corroborating evidence that Chuck had taken from his safe in Black Rock, would be enough to have all the money he made from Stephen's inventions returned to him. By the time she finished with Roark, he'd given up everything he knew. He took whatever he wanted when he was the rich and powerful Ted Roark with a private army to ensure that no-one stood in his way, but here? Strapped to a chair in a room with a psychopathic bitch who wanted to practice surgery on him? He would tell her whatever information she wanted if that stopped her carving him up! He wasn't about to try and fool her either, because he believed her when when she said that if she found out that he'd told her anything but the truth, no matter where they put him, she'd get to him, and nothing would stop the retribution.

Casey took Roark off to get himself cleaned up and get some clean clothes (he would have been happy throwing him back in his cell the way he was, but Chuck had insisted on some basic humanity), so Zarnow was panicking when Roark hadn't returned before they came to drag him out of his cell. When they pushed him into the interrogation room and the chair and floor around it had just been washed (to clean up the mess that Roark had made, pissing himself when he was strapped to the chair) and Mary Jaworski was covered up to prevent blood getting on her, he was convinced that she'd carved up Roark and they'd dumped his body somewhere. As a result, Mary didn't have to touch him, he started telling her everything he knew before they even finished strapping him into the chair. When he was taken back to his cell and saw Roark asleep in his cell, he felt like an idiot though.

* * *

Dr Busgang had fallen asleep soon after they put him in the holding cell, so as they were fairly certain that he was a victim here, they decided to let him sleep and talk to him in the morning. He was taken into a meeting room and had a pleasant talk with him. Chuck was watching this via a video feed (as was Auntie Di), and between the Intersect and what he was checking on-line, he was comfortable that they had enough confirmation of what Dr Busgang was telling them.

Auntie Di agreed that the best way to protect him was to take him into protective custody and have him working on the Intersect Project, so she broke into the meeting "I'm sorry Doctor Busgang, I am Brigadier General Diane Beckman. I must confess that I've been listening in on what you've been saying, and I've been having my people confirm what you've been telling us. I'm sure that you understand how we have to be careful in view of those creatures that we brought back from that site with you?"

He nodded "Yes General, of course."

She smiled and nodded "Good, now my people have told me that they have confirmed what you have told us, and it has been suggested to me that the best way to protect you would be to take you into protective custody and offer you a position within the Intersect Project. That way you could continue in your chosen field and be under the protection of our trusted security people. Now I'm not trying to pressure you into accepting this, but I feel compelled to inform you that your other options would be the Witness Protection, where you could never have anything to do with anything in your fields or contact anyone you knew for fear of leading people like Ted Roark to you. Another option would be to relocate you into a secure facility, you could work there but you would be stuck in a bunker all the time and you could never contact anyone. A third option would be for you to continue as you were, but I'm afraid that you wouldn't be under any government protection and it would only be a matter of time before you were taken by people like Roark. In the interests of full disclosure, under the first option, your communications with anyone outside of the group would be controlled as well, but I'm sure that we could make arrangements for you to talk to people you wanted to. Of these options, which would be your choice Doctor Busgang?"

He looked nervous "To be honest General, they all sound a little dangerous to me, but if I have to choose one of them, I'd choose option one."

She looked at him "Is that your choice then Doctor Busgang?"

He looked a little more confident as he nodded and said "Yes, General."

She smiled at him. "I think that you've made a good choice Doctor. You'll be brought back to Washington on the same plane as the prisoners, but I must ask you, for your own sake, don't talk to them. Actually, if you just sat there looking forlorn and not talking to anyone, you may be able to convince them that you're going to prison as well, and if the other side thought that you'd probably be safer as they'd be looking for you in the prisons."

He nodded again "I'll try that General."

She nodded as well. "We may as well start this now then, look upset and drag your feet when they take you back to your holding cell, and remember, don't talk to anyone."

Sarah smiled as she went to the door and called for Yuri. When he came in, she said "Doctor Busgang, this is Yuri." Yuri shook his hand and said "Pleased to meet you Doctor" and the Doctor replied in kind. Sarah went on then "Yuri, we're trying to convince those other two that Doctor Busgang has been arrested as well because he couldn't convince us that he wasn't part of what was going on there, so what we're going to do here is to have you drag him back to his cell, not too roughly mind you, but you can scowl because you look really imposing when you do that."

Yuri grinned "Mike's imposing, just ask him"

"Yes I know, but he can't help smiling if he sees Zoe, so that would ruin the effect."

Yuri bowed to concede defeat "So Doctor, are you ready to be dragged back to your cell?"

Dr Busgang shook his head with a laugh "It's hard to believe that you are the same people who destroyed that place a few hours ago, OK, wait, I have to make myself look scared again."

Yuri said "Would this help?" and suddenly leant forward with a fierce scowl on his face.

Busgang yelped and looked terrified and Sarah squeezed his and with a reassuring smile "That's perfect Doctor."

With that, Yuri kept that look on his face as he dragged the Doctor back to his cell, and all the Doctor had to do to keep in character was look at that expression.

* * *

Most of the team managed to catch a nap before they had to take their charges to the plane. They were delivering four to the plane, Roark, Zarnow, Dr Busgang, and Stephen. Mary, Chuck and Ellie told Stephen that he was going back to work with Dr Dreyfus full time, and he wouldn't be leaving until he was cleared by Dr Dreyfus. Stephen tried to say that he was a grown man and he wasn't going to be told what to do, especially by his own children, and he really got to see Commander Carmichael. He thought that his son had been frightening at Black Rock, but as the focus of his rage now, he found out why so many were so afraid of Commander Carmichael.

"You will do EXACTLY what you are told, and you will not say another word! You put my wife, my family and my team at risk last night because of your stupidity and your selfish pride, TWICE! First you ruined a planned incursion by my team into the Fulcrum facility at Roark Industries by going in there, WHERE YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN! by yourself and getting yourself caught. That meant that we had to engage in a fire fight which put my people at risk, two actually because we also came under fire when we were chasing after you. THEN, I had to track you to Black Rock by appropriating Air Force resources and get in enough resources to take on a major base at short notice, as well as destroying it to make sure that nothing dangerous was left. Which leads us up to your worst transgression, to save YOU, my wife and the rest of my family and team had to go into that place and risk being caught by vastly superior forces. If anything had happened to them, I would have killed you myself! So, DAD, you WILL go to Dr Dreyfus and put your best effort into working with him until he clears you to come back to the real world, otherwise, you'll be walking out that door and never speaking another word to any of us until the day you die!"

Stephen looked to Mary and Ellie for support, but their faces told him that they were in complete agreement with Chuck. He opened his mouth to say something, but Chuck had had enough, so he just stuck a tranq dart in his neck and authorised those escorting them to tranq him if he cause any trouble, along with Roark and Zarnow.

* * *

When they arrived in Washington, Stephen went to Dr Dreyfus's, Dr Busgang went to a secure living facility to catch up on rest while everything else was being set up for him, and Roark and Zarnow went into the deepest, darkest CIA/NSA black site there was.

Getting the news less than a week later that both of them had been killed in a prison brawl and were being cremated that day set off alarm bells for Diane and the DNI, and they scrambled into action so that Diane was there inside two hours with the authority of the DNI, the FBI SWAT team and a SEAL team from Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek. They stormed through the prison to the crematorium and stopped the ones who were trying to get the furnace hot enough to destroy any evidence before they could get through from the entrance.

The bodies were nothing like Roark and Zarnow, but the men there were more afraid of the one who'd ordered them to get rid of the bodies than they were of Diane, or at least they were until she ordered her personal security detail to strap them to the trays and push them into the oven. They held out until they were pushed in far enough for their hair to be burnt off, then they cracked.

They'd never know for sure whether the ones who died trying to stop the FBI and SEALs arresting the most senior people in the prison were part of their organisation, or just fiercely loyal, but the fact that all the senior people running the prison were part of it made anyone close to them questionable. The ones in charge refused to say a word, but the risk of someone like Roark being out there and working with the other side pushed them to extreme measures, so they were dragged down to the crematorium and treated the same way as the ones trying to get rid of the evidence had been.

They broke just as the others did, the fear of being burnt alive will do that to you. They didn't have a lot of information, but what they did have was enough to be a worry, they were on their way to Russia, to Volkoff Industries, oh shit!


	15. New Challenges

**Sorry, still tied up working on my steampunk stories.**

 **Yeah, I know that I've still got to finish Charade, CVN and Mr & Mrs C among others, but it's difficult to get motivated to go back and try to pick up a stalled story when others are moving along.**

 **Usual disclaimers, no rights to any characters portrayed, this isn't the real world and it's not a Disney Princess story.**

Pasadena - May 2009

The next couple of months were mostly spent mopping up the remnants of the Fulcrum cells, and trying to track down Roark and Zarnow. Unfortunately they did confirm that the pair had indeed run to Volkoff in Russia, which would make them, at the very least, difficult to get to. Alexei Volkoff had grown incredibly powerful in the past twenty years, so he had enough control over the Russian government to ensure that they protected him from any incursions. By extension, that also protected Roark and Zarnow from them going after them.

While they were successful in cleaning up the remnants of Fulcrum, they were extracting disturbing intel from the ones they captured that indicated that Fulcrum had in fact been associated with another, bigger, organisation known as 'The Ring'. This 'Ring' was apparently based in Europe and the old Eastern Bloc countries, and indications were that it should be much more of a concern than Fulcrum had been. They also uncovered information that showed that Roark and Volkoff had been working together for quite a while, at least a decade but probably rather longer than that.

* * *

Pasadena – June 2009

Diane contacted them with an urgent mission in June, the team had been engaged by the CIA because they needed an assist with an on-going operation. When she and Jane Bentley came up on screen, they could see that the Director of the National Clandestine Service was pissed off, and she didn't waste time telling them why. "The DCIA has ordered me to engage the Intersect team to salvage an operation that one of the senior officers of the CIA has been running without my knowledge. I just learned that one of our agents, Alexis White, has been in deep cover as the live in girlfriend of an arms dealer, Karl Stromberg, for some time now, but something's come up that she and the CIA can't handle."

She looked at Sarah "Agent Walker, you've worked with Agent White in the past, haven't you?"

Sarah nodded "Yes Ma'am (they were careful to maintain detachment in case anyone else could monitor the transmission), it's been a while but I remember her. How long has she been in deep cover?"

When Jane bit out "Nearly six months", the women gasped. Carina had been on that type of mission for a month or two and she'd almost lost herself, she couldn't imagine doing it for six months, she would have killed herself first. She blurted out "We're getting her out of there, right?"

Jane nodded grimly "That wasn't part of the brief but we most definitely are! It's criminal to leave an agent in that type of environment for so long! This means that your mission will have to go beyond what I was told to bring you in for, but I trust that I can depend on you to do what's needed to help her wind up her mission and get her out of there?"

Chuck just said "Yes, Director!" grimly.

Jane nodded, and her expression portrayed the gratitude that she couldn't tell them, for fear of other ears. She passed on the information about what they were being engaged to do, and when and where they'd be meeting Alexis to get an invite to the party that was to be used to cover their entry into the mansion, and then signed off. They were all furious about what had been done to the woman, and they started putting together everything that they could find on Stromberg in the Intersect and on-line while Sarah and Chuck got ready to meet her at the club.

* * *

Sarah waited until the man with Alexis went to the bar and moved in. Alexis remembered her, of course, as no-one forgot working with the Ice Queen, Director Graham's Enforcer, so she had no trouble playing along as Sarah came up to hug her and whisper in her ear "I'm Sarah Cavenagh, your best friend, and that's my new husband Charlie behind me. Don't worry, we'll get you out, give me your phone." She handed the phone off to Chuck and continued.

"Tell him that we haven't seen each other in ages because I was in Europe on our honeymoon and I couldn't call you when we got back because I lost your number when I lost my phone. I just saw you when I came to the club with Charlie and we're going shopping tomorrow at some marvellous boutiques that I've found out about in Pasadena to catch up on the girl time we've missed." She felt a tap on her arm and took the phone to pass it back to Alexis with her added to the speed dials "I'm number seven in your speed dials now..." She saw Stromberg turn to come back and stepped back, chattering away like a ditzy valley girl without missing a beat.

When Stromberg joined them, Alexis introduced him to Sarah, her best friend who dropped off the planet when she was on her honeymoon in Europe, and her new husband Charlie. After chattering for a while, Stromberg started to drag Alexis away for a romantic dinner, but she stopped "Wait, you're coming to our engagement party on Saturday, right?" Sarah froze momentarily and then grinned "Of course! Wouldn't miss it! We can talk about it tomorrow while we're out shopping."

They forced themselves to keep up the act for another half an hour before they left the club in case they were being watched, but as soon as they were in the car, Sarah pulled out her phone to call Jane's private number "Hi Aunt Jane, what were you told about this party on Saturday?" She listened to the response and then said "No, it's their engagement party!"

She had to listen to Jane ranting and raving for the next five to ten minutes, but she didn't mind, she was just as enraged as she was, and so was Chuck.

The next day, things went well, they actually had a boutique and coffee shop set up that some of Anna's friends ran, and it did pretty well, but it had been set up so that you could go in the front and out the back without it looking too suspicious, because it fronted onto two streets. All they had to do was spend a little time looking through a couple of boutiques and when they reached this one, they walked straight through and jumped into the minivan that was waiting to whisk them away while the men that Stromberg had following Alexis were standing around out front, waiting.

They brought Alexis into the Intersect Base and got all the details out of her. None of them were too surprised to find that the Engagement Party was just one of many details that had been withheld from them. When Chuck looked up the specs on the vault that they needed to break into, he swore, because Stromberg had reason to be confident that his vault was impregnable, the security systems that he could have in there were daunting.

While he was doing this, Alexis launched into telling them the details of what she'd picked up, and she'd done a good job. She had house plans, details of the security system, numbers, schedules and pictures of all the guards, just about everything they needed to get this operation set up. With the number of guards that Stromberg had there, they decided that they needed to have backup on-site, so they looked at the bio that had been set up for her and Casey became Alexis's 'Uncle Alex', her only living relative.

The story was that Sarah had known that Uncle Alex was back from Europe because Vicky, his trophy wife, was a girlfriend of hers and she'd called her to have lunch yesterday, along with Dasha, another girlfriend of Alexis's. They'd also have two vans outside with Anna, Jeff and Skip as the technical team, Ellie running the operation, and a dozen of the Shadow Team ready to come in if they were needed.

When they were finished, Alexis and Sarah went back to the shops and let Stromberg's men find them coming out of another boutique on a back street. Alexis told Stromberg that night that her Uncle Alex and his wife and another girlfriend and her partner were also coming to the party now. Alexis also took a number of the remote access devices to attach to the security systems and computer networks to allow the team to get in and take control of the systems. They planted one of the plain cars from the team's pool close enough to Stromberg's mansion to act as a relay between the Wi-Fi signal from the remote access devices and their systems back in the Castle, or the control vans.

They got into the systems OK and were getting most of the information they needed out of them. They were also into the security systems and had enough control for Anna and the others to do their usual trick and make them invisible as far as the security monitors went on the mission. They did have one little problem though, the vault was on a separate system and they couldn't find any way to get into it, so Chuck was going have to go in raw. He didn't like that, because it added to the possibility of something going wrong, and he was compiling a list of what he'd need to take in with him.

Most of the list wasn't difficult, wide spectrum glasses that would let him see whatever lasers were in the vault were easy, as was a sensor for radiation and electrical energy and a sniffer to pick up explosives or biological elements, they had those. Alexis had told him that she didn't think that it could be a suitcase nuke as it was only the side of a metal briefcase, but they needed to test for everything anyway. An ultra high sensitivity microphone to detect mechanical activity needed to be made, but he and Leslie could do that.

The biggest problem was how he was going to negotiate the lasers he expected to find inside the vault if he couldn't disable the system when he got there, but he thought that he had something that could help him there, too. While they'd been chasing down the remnants of Fulcrum and handling their other duties, Chuck, Ellie and Leslie had finished the 'Carmichael Intersect', or CI as Ellie and Anna called it. Anna and Jeff helped them with this, but Stephen hadn't been part of it since his meltdown to do with Roark.

Chuck was the guinea pig for the CI, as he was the only one who had any history of being able to handle Intersect uploads without adverse effects. When they were all comfortable that they hadn't left anything dangerous in the code, Ellie wired him up so that they could monitor everything going on in his head while he uploaded the CI.

From what they were seeing, Ellie thought that all they'd done was remove the Intersects in his head, because the activity and stress levels in his brain plummeted. Part of what they'd coded into the CI upload process was designed to hunt out and erase prior Intersect code, to ensure that the CI was the only Intersect operating in the brain, so she thought that there was a glitch in the installation code that meant that the previous versions were removed but the CI wasn't loaded.

Mind you, she didn't view that as being a bad thing at all, as seeing what the fucking Intersect had done to their father's brain, she'd be far happier if it was out of her little brother's head. Not that she had any misconceptions about the fact that if they couldn't get the CI working, he'd go and reload the CIA/NSA Intersect if that was the case, as his damned sense of duty was so strong that he'd feel compelled to do so. If that meant that he only had one 'safe' version of the Intersect in his head, she could still take that as a win though. Whatever Chuck did though, she was excited about the possibility of getting the Intersect out of their father's head, as with it gone she was relatively confident that he would recover properly.

She ran Chuck through all the usual tests to ensure that he was still the same brilliant and wonderful (or annoying, depending on the day) little brother he'd always been, and while he didn't question her hypothesis that the upload process had merely removed the previous versions, he suggested that they do the Intersect tests anyway.

Ellie was shocked to see that the CI WAS working, far faster and better than any of the previous versions had, and it was putting no more than a fraction of the load on his brain that the CIA/NSA or Fulcrum versions did, even when they induced massive flashes. She put him through a battery of tests while he was doing this and the strain on his brain was far less than any other time she'd done any testing on him, even before Bryce Fucking Larkin sent him the NSA/CIA Intersect and he'd stupidly loaded it into his head. They located Intersect prompts that would only apply to one of the Intersect versions in his head, and these tests showed that he was accessing all the Intersect data in his head equally well.

With the traditional Intersect testing out of the way, they tried testing the Fulcrum innovation, adding physical and other skill sets via the Intersect. Once again, the fact that all the interfaces had been moved from the conscious areas of the brain, down into the unconscious and native brain/body interface areas, meant that they performed far better with far less strain than before. He was quicker, faster, stronger, and he tired far less because the Intersect wasn't struggling with his body to perform the functions, so it was more natural and efficient.

The stored functions for the skill sets were rather limited in the Fulcrum Intersect, but part of what they'd gotten from Fulcrum's Meadow Branch, and Roark Instruments, facilities was the code for the systems that they used to code the skills routines into the Intersect database. It had been Leslie who had commented that the code to do this was compatible with the Intersect code, and how cool it would be to do away with all those external systems they used, but Chuck had latched onto that.

A week later, Chuck had thrown together the basis of a module that plugged into the CI code and should be able to use the CI to code the skill set routines directly into the Intersect database. They all worked on that for another few weeks, and they were confident that it was a functioning (and safe) component of the CI now. What limited testing of the functionality that they'd had time for so far had worked fine, but now Chuck was going to be really testing the function, because he was going to try and use that to add the skills he needed to manoeuvre around the lasers in the vault if he had to.

Between their meeting with Alexis and Saturday, Chuck replayed everything in his memory and watched videos of men and women's gymnastics, acrobatics, martial arts, ballet, modern dance, break dancing, mime, anything that may include moves that would allow him to manoeuvre past the lasers in the vault, and practised the moves in the dojo (or Boudoir when he didn't need the space of the dojo). Sarah was enjoying watching him doing this, because she couldn't believe how flexible he was, and she found the way he moved more than a little of a turn on.

* * *

On Saturday night, the teams were on site in the vans when they started to turn up for the party, Chuck and Sarah were in the SL 65 AMG, Dasha and Javier were in the Aston Martin and Casey and Vicky were in the stretch Town Car. Alexis went off at 'Uncle Alex', irate that she found out that the only family she had was back in the country from someone else.

Casey played along. "Hey, don't blame me, Victoria suddenly decided that she was tired of the fashion shows and wanted to come home NOW. I've been on the phone ever since I got back, trying to shore up my business relations with the people over there that I was supposed to be meeting with this week!"

"So you can call your business partners, and Vicky can call Sarah and Dasha, but neither of you thought to call me? We're the only family we have Uncle Alex, doesn't that count for anything? I thought that I wasn't going to have anyone from my side at my engagement party until I saw Sarah at that club!" She turned on the tears then and Casey went to hug her, taking her off to talk. The talk was actually about the details of the plan for her to leave with them, but she did a great job of selling it as a teary heart to heart.

When they arrived, Chuck and Sarah were trying to keep a low profile, because even though they'd altered their appearances, there was always a possibility that someone might connect them to the Carmichaels. At least they could spend their time with the others as they were just there as Alexis's friends and family, so they didn't have to go through the motions of circulating.

A bit before the speeches were supposed to start, Alexis slipped Sarah the keycards they needed to get to the vault, and when everyone else was being herded into the foyer for the speeches, Chuck and Sarah slipped away in the other direction.

Anna and the others were ready, and they started cycling video to hide them from the security monitors, they also kept an eye out to warn them about the guards, but they were all downstairs at the moment.

When they got to the vault, Chuck had no trouble opening it, but there was nothing that he could get to to disable the security system. When he put the glasses on and activated them though, he swore, so Sarah grabbed her's to see what the problem was. 'Fuck! Multiple roving lasers? Fixed ones aren't hard enough?'

She asked "Can you do it Honey?" but wasn't too happy with his answer of "I hope so!"

He looked at her and caught her expression. "No, I can, don't worry Sweetie!"

He transferred the sensors he needed to his pants pockets and zipped them shut, taking off his suit jacket and handing it to her as he memorised the lasers' movement patterns. When he had them, he gave her a kiss for luck and started.

She couldn't take her eyes off him as he moved through the lasers, leaping, twisting, spinning, even dropping to the floor and sliding under the beam, she'd never seen anyone move like that, not even when he was practising. When he managed to get through all the beams without triggering anything, he grinned at her as they shared a sigh of relief.

Chuck tested the case for radiation, but it looked like Alexis had been right, it didn't appear to be nuclear. The next tests he ran were for any live circuits, explosives, biological agents or signs that might indicate alarms, or a bomb trigger or mechanism, and when they came up clear too he pulled out his lock picks and got to work on the case's locks. When he got it open, the device inside didn't look like a weapon, it was just a flat ovoid, but he ran all the scans over it again, and it came up clean too.

Once he was convinced that the device wasn't dangerous, he removed it from the case and went through the rest of the case with a fine toothed comb to ensure that absolutely nothing else was in there, before relocking the case and leaving it in exactly as he'd found it once he was confident that he had everything he'd come for. He knelt down, and when all the beams were clear of the floor, slid the device across to the vault's doorway where Sarah was waiting to collect it, and she picked it up to get it out of the way.

As the patterns were different from the other side, he took another couple of minutes to get the movement patterns of the beams again before he worked his way back out to the door. He took off his shirt so that Sarah could tape the device to his stomach before he put his shirt and jacket back on.

Sarah checked with Dasha while Chuck was getting dressed again, and she told them they had at least five to ten minutes yet (because Casey had taken over giving the speech when Stromberg's turned out to be no more than a couple of lines). With that they headed for Stromberg's office to search for any other papers that may have relevant information for Alexis's mission, as well as any external drives or computers that weren't on the network. They snapped pictures of a few documents and copied the thumb drives they found in the safe and the drawers, putting everything back the way it was and getting back to the party before Casey's speech had finished.

When the speeches finished Sarah slipped the key cards back to Alexis as she told her that Charlie had been called into work urgently because some critical systems had apparently crashed. Then, with a kiss and one last "congratulations", she ran back to Chuck and they took off, though they only went as far as the control van.

As they listened over the mics, Alexis put on a great performance as she played Stromberg, recounting the story that Casey had briefed her on earlier. She whined about how her brother had just told her that his girlfriend was demanding that they head back to Europe again tomorrow, because one of her friends who was still over there had called her to tell her about an exclusive show she'd heard about that was being put on in Milan in a couple of days, so she wouldn't have a chance to catch up with him before he left.

They heard Vicky snort when she listened to Alexis going on about "That bitch, she always has to have everything her way, she wouldn't even know him if I didn't introduce them, but now she's dragging him back to Europe and god knows when I'll see him again, I don't even know whether he'll be here for our wedding."

Stromberg told her that she should go and catch up with her uncle tonight then, and he'd see her in the morning (he actually sounded as though he cared), so she'd kissed him (slipping the key cards back into his pocket while he was distracted) and thanked him profusely before she ran upstairs to grab her overnight bag (along with everything of her's she wanted and the evidence she'd already collected). She kissed him again and told him she'd see him in the morning before she left with Casey and Vicky, Dasha and Javier also left at the same time.

As soon as the Town Car and Aston Martin passed the van, the van took off after them, with Sarah and Chuck following in the SL 65. Stromberg shouldn't realise that anything was wrong for ages, but they didn't want to be around, just in case.

Back at the Castle House, they locked the "weapon" away in a safe in the Dungeon, because Jane told them that it related to another case that they were being brought into in the near future. After they'd given the mission report to Diane and Jane, Ellie gave Alexis a sedative and they settled her into the Dungeon's Apartment, because they were flying her back to D.C. in their G550 the following morning.

Jane had told Alexis that she was to report to her and no-one else when she arrived at Langley. She would handle her debriefing and then she would be attached to her office for the foreseeable future, that would be for at least until she was finished with the counselling sessions that she was booked in for, but she intended it to be rather longer than that.

* * *

After they got Alexis settled down in the Apartment, the team went back to the conference room and initiated another link with Auntie Di to find out what the hell was was going on. As usual, the information that Jane had been given to pass on was only a small part of what was relevant, and this time it was even worse, because the some government oversight committee had gone over the DNI's head and the President had buckled and ordered the DNI to have them work with the CIA's 'Ring Expert' to pursue it. There was also a question about why the CIA's expert on the Ring would be in the United States, given what they'd found out about them primarily being based in Europe.

Chuck and the rest of the tech team combed all the agency records for this 'Special Agent Daniel Shaw', and there were suspicious holes all through his records, in fact they read much like Bryce Larkin's had, which didn't inspire any confidence at all. There wasn't much in the Intersect about Shaw either, he'd just pretty much appeared out of nowhere with no service history behind him, and that made them all wonder.

They didn't like the way this thing with this CIA 'Special Agent' being forced on them smelt, so it was agreed that they would all use their real ranks when he came in, rather than their pre-Intersect team ranks as they normally did. Casey, Sarah, Carina, Zondra and Dasha were all the equivalent of Senior Special Agents in their respective agencies now, but Chuck was formally recognised as the Special Agent in Charge for the Intersect team and the Station Chief for the Pasadena Station (that was actually the Dungeon, but Shaw didn't know that) by the DIA, NSA and FBI.

No-one expected this 'Special Agent' to accept their ranks, but Jane had seen the evidence and that it was all officially approved. She'd also seen Langston Graham's signature on the document that said that Sarah was being transferred into the Intersect team at that rank, so when this Shaw arced up (there was no 'if'), they'd bring her in to shut him down.

* * *

As predicted, when Casey escorted Shaw into the Intersect base, he strutted in as if he owned the place. He decided that he was in charge because he was a 'CIA Special Agent', and everyone would defer to him. They just looked at each other, this was going to be interesting.

After checking out Carina, Zondra and Dasha as if they were pieces of meat, Shaw ignored everyone else and zeroed in on Sarah. He'd decided that he was going to put these losers in their place straight away to ensure that they knew who was in charge, but Walker was something he'd wanted for a long time. Casey was a burn out, just marking time to his retirement. Miller was commonly known as nothing more than a demon in bed, but he didn't know anything about the other two women, he'd take them for a test spin though. Bartowski was just some geek who was supposed to be an analyst, but Walker was stunning, and he'd heard enough stories about what she'd do with the proper motivation to want a taste, so he'd play nice with her, until he got what he wanted from her anyway. "Hello Sarah, I've heard so many good things about you, it's going to be a pleasure to be working with you."

She looked at him as if he was something she'd stepped in. "The pleasure's all your's Shaw."

That was enough to set him off, because he wouldn't accept being treated with anything but the respect he believed he was due, so he drew himself up to his full height and puffed out his chest. "That's Special Agent Shaw, Agent Walker, you need to learn to show proper respect to your superiors!"

Sarah's expression didn't change as she responded. "No Shaw, that's obviously obviously your problem, have the CIA forgotten the required protocols on reporting to the Special Agent in Charge when you enter a Station since I left?"

Shaw frowned at her and asked mockingly. "What Station?"

To get this arsehole away from Sarah, Casey responded, to make him turn and look at him. "This Station! Pasadena Station is a facility that's shared between the DIA, NSA and FBI."

At that Shaw decided that he needed to get this back on track, so he looked around and snorted, saying. "This is a station? I suppose you've gotten yourself a promotion at last then Casey."

Casey's expression matched Sarah's "Yes I did Shaw, but I'm not the SAC, it appears that Senior Special Agent Walker was correct about the CIA's forgetting how to behave, if they ever knew."

Shaw tried to stand up to him. "I'm not here to play who's who with you people, you've been assigned to assist me on MY operation, so the fact is I'm in charge and that you'll all do what I tell you, or else!"

At that point Chuck burst out laughing. "Shit Sarah, are all CIA Agents like this? I thought that Larkin and Watterman were just arseholes because that was their nature."

Sarah smiled at him "No, that's pretty much the way they all are."

Shaw rounded on him "I won't take that from some geek who doesn't rate being called an analyst Bartowski, one more word out of you and I'll have you fired!"

Chuck had been on edge from the moment Shaw went after Sarah, so that was enough to make him assert his authority. He stood up and moved towards Shaw with grim expression which made Shaw back up as he got closer. Chuck stayed right in his face as he spoke to him. "That's Special Agent in Charge Carmichael to you, Shaw, this is my station, my team, and MY operation, and anything that is run out this station and with my team is run by me, do you understand?"

Shaw started stammering that this was an CIA operation and he'd be running it, and Chuck looked at Sarah.

In less than twenty seconds the big screen lit up with the image of Major General Diane Beckman.

The flash of amusement that crossed over her face when she took in the tableau on screen would have been missed by anyone who didn't know her, and she'd schooled her expression before she spoke "Is there a problem here Special Agent in Charge Carmichael?"

Chuck turned to the screen, "General, were the CIA advised of the conditions that apply when they request the assistance from my team? Also, are the CIA required to operate under the same protocols as the rest of the intelligence community when it comes to reporting to another agency's station?"

"Yes, Agent Carmichael, I have informed the Director of the National Clandestine Service of the requirements for any operations with your team, and in my experience, the CIA has complied with the required protocols when reporting to NSA stations at least, why, what has happened here? The situation appears a little tense there?"

With the Chuck turned to the screen "Agent Shaw here has disrespected every member of my team since he arrived General. Upon entering he checked out our female agents and then ignored everyone else as he immediately tried to make advances to Senior Special Agent Walker. When she rebuffed his advances he tried to intimidate her into showing him respect as her superior, so she reminded him that protocol required that he report to the Special Agent in Charge of the Station."

"When Major Casey informed him of what station he was in, because he apparently didn't know where he was, he disrespected him, even though he obviously presumed that Major Casey was the Special Agent in Charge, and went on to inform him that as we were assigned to assist him, we all worked for him and we'd do whatever he told us to. I must admit that I laughed at him because he was so ridiculous, and he informed me, what was it? Oh yes, that I was some geek who doesn't rate being called an analyst and if I said one more word he'd have me fired."

"If this is an indication of how cooperation with the CIA will go General, I will not allow any further CIA involvement on any of our operations. It's too disruptive for my team and we have too many important projects on our books to waste time on things like this."

Shaw only managed to get out "Who do.." before the General cut him off. "Shaw, I strongly advise you shut your mouth before I give the Agents leave to do what they obviously want to do." That made Shaw look around to see that the others all had pistols in their hands, and murder in their eyes, when he saw that he flinched and stepped back.

The General went on "Agent Carmichael, can we get the Director of the NCS on the line and try to see if we can manage to sort this out without bloodshed?" Chuck reluctantly agreed, but stressed that what happened here wouldn't be allowed to continue. The General nodded and brought Jane Bentley on-line.

As soon as she came on line, Diane jumped in "Director Bentley, what instructions were given to Agent Shaw about the operation with the Intersect team?" She looked from her image, to the image from the bunker.

"As you advised me General, I informed Agent Shaw that he was to report to the Special Agent in Change of the Pasadena Station, and that the SAC would have full control of the operation."

"Are you aware of any medical, mental health or illicit drug related issues with this agent Director?"

"No I am not, why would you ask that General?"

"Because your agent, upon entering our station, ignored everyone else as he tried to make advances to Agent Walker, tried to intimidate her into submitting to his authority, disrespected her and the rest of the team, informed them that they all worked for him because it was his operation, and told the SAC that he'd have him fired if he spoke back to him."

Jane froze at that, as anyone going after Sarah was a hot button for her. "Is this true Shaw?"

Shaw only got out "No Ma'am" before Chuck said, "Let's play the recording, shall we?", which made him backtrack "Well, some parts might have been taken that way, perhaps, but her interpretation was out of context".

Chuck swore under his breath and said "Director, if I may?" and nodded to Zondra who'd queued it up.

At the end of the recording the Jane looked furious, because Shaw had not only been a sleaze to Sarah and the other women and disrespected everyone there, he'd also managed to make the CIA look like idiots by association. "What part of what the General said did you think was out of context Shaw? Because from what I just saw and heard, she went easy on you." This time Shaw remained silent.

Diane took up the discussion again. "Director, obviously, our team would obviously have difficulty working with Agent Shaw given the way he has behaved, is there anyone else that can be assigned for this operation?"

"I'm afraid not General, Shaw is the only Ring specialist that the CIA has, he was reporting DCIA Graham before he died, but the Acting DCIA assigned him to me, as the Director of the National Clandestine Service. After this, I'm beginning to understand why."

Then she turned to address Shaw. "Shaw, are you capable of behaving like a professional, and provide the team you've been assigned to work with the Ring information it needs to complete this operation, WITHOUT doing anything else stupid?"

Shaw gritted his teeth "Yes Ma'am."

The Director turned his attention back to the others. "General, Special Agent in Charge Carmichael, are you prepared to proceed on this basis, or do we need to cancel the operation?" Chuck looked at the others, and when they reluctantly nodded, he agreed to see whether it could be workable, but stipulated that Shaw would have to work out of the CIA's L.A. point of presence most of the time as he wasn't prepared to subject his team to him any more than absolutely necessary.

When Jane tried to say that the CIA didn't have stations within the United States, Chuck snapped back at her "I'm well aware that you don't have any OFFICIAL stations in the United States Director, but I'm also aware that you DO have UNOFFICIAL stations, like the one you have over in Los Feliz, and Agent Shaw will be working out of there unless he is required to work directly with my team for a specific operation, have I made myself clear enough, or do you require further explanation?"

Jane had to hide her smile at that, as Sarah's husband knew far more than he was supposed to, and what's more he was damned impressive when he asserted his authority, she hadn't seem him do that before. She made a show of angrily telling him that he'd made himself quite clear and agreed to his requirements, and with that they cancelled the link.

* * *

They headed into the conference room to get the information together to get a start on this operation, but as Chuck entered the room, he saw Shaw making a beeline for the chair next to Sarah. "SHAW! What the hell do you think you're doing?"

Shaw was still deluding himself with his belief that he could swing this his way and casually waved to the seat he was heading for, saying "I don't know what you mean Agent Carmichael, I was just going to sit down so we can get started."

Chuck only just managed to keep a civil tone as he said "Senior Special Agent Walker has made it quite clear that she doesn't wish to be anywhere near you, so you WILL respect her wishes and stay the hell away from her, do you understand?"

Shaw bristled and started to respond, but Chuck pointed to the far end of the table and barked "You sit down there!"

When Shaw tried to stand his ground the tone of Chuck's voice changed as he barked "Now!" and he scampered to the end of the table.

When Shaw had seated himself where he was told and Chuck sat down between him and Sarah (in the very seat Shaw had been heading for) and told him to tell them what he knew about the Ring. When Shaw's response was that the background wasn't relevant, they just needed to concentrate on the current operation so he could proceed, that didn't go down at all well with Chuck.

He grabbed the keyboard on the table and about twenty seconds later the screen lit up with the image of Jane Bentley. When she saw who was on screen, she wasn't happy, as it meant that that idiot had obviously done something else stupid. "What can I do for you Special Agent Carmichael?"

"Director, I'm sorry but this operation will have to be cancelled after all, Agent Shaw has refused to provide us with information about the Ring that we'll need to conduct the operation."

The Director glared at Shaw "Is this true Shaw?"

Shaw only got out "No Ma'am…." before Chuck started the replay of what happened in the room, including him making another try at Sarah.

When it was finished playing, Jane looked at Shaw and asked "What did I tell you about not doing anything else stupid Shaw? Quite aside from that, just in the last fifteen minutes, you've twice lied about what you've said when anyone up to even the level of a village idiot would know that the proof that you're lying was ready to be played."

"Special Agent Carmichael, if you would give me ten minutes to clear my schedule, it appears that I will have to sit in on this to make the Village Idiot deliver what's required."

Chuck got as far as "I'm sorry about this Director" when Jane cut him off "No, it's the CIA that needs to apologise to you, all of you, for forcing THIS on you, and I can assure you that that apology will be coming your way but unfortunately we're seeing enough intel to be certain that this Ring IS something to be worried about, and this idiot is supposedly the one who knows the most about it, so if you'll just give me ten minutes, I'll clear my schedule so I can try to help get what you need. Shaw, get your facts in order!"

True to her word, it only took her ten minutes to line up people to cover things for her because she had to assist with an inter agency issue that one of their agents had created. She left the link open, so they heard what she was saying to the people she called. When she came back to them she said "So Shaw, Special Agent Carmichael has asked you to fill the team in on everything you know about the Ring. Well, we're listening! SHAW!"

Shaw was interested in nothing but his own standing, so he'd spent that time stewing over the way she'd been openly treating him like an idiot and siding with these people. He used to report to the fucking DCIA, but now he'd been relegated to the Director of the NCS, and the bitch wasn't giving him any of the respect he deserved! He assured himself that he'd get this back on track and put all of them in their place, and when this was done, Walker was going to be on her knees doing everything he wanted to atone for the disrespect she showed. Bartowski was a problem, as they appeared to be involved in some way though, so he'd need to get him out of the way to get a clear shot at her.

He was so tied up making his plans that he didn't hear when Jane came back and spoke to him, so she had to shout his name a second time to get his attention. He muttered something about "Sorry ma'am, just putting the information together" and then started talking about the Ring. He was still thinking about his plans, so they had to keep interrupting him to tell him to explain what the hell he was mumbling about.

An hour or so later, they had everything Shaw knew about the Ring, and that was rather unimpressive. He had supposedly managed to insert an agent into the Ring in Paris in 2003, but they'd been killed in 2005, and in the four years since then, he hadn't brought in anything of any real value, because he'd just been chasing his tail (or chasing tail, more to the point) around Europe and recording any mention of the Ring he heard.

Recently, he'd heard on the grapevine that his agent's lock box with all the intel that they'd accumulated on the Ring was being sold at auction, and that the ones selling it had paid an arms dealer, Karl Stromberg, ten million to transport it to the United States for the auction. He'd come back to the States to get it off Stromberg, but apparently some NSA team had managed to get it off him, so they'd have to get it from the NSA.

Chuck glanced at the screen at that point and Jane shared a smile with him, as Shaw had no idea that these people were the ones who had recovered the lock box, and she was happy for him to stay ignorant.

Of course Shaw missed that exchange as he'd just been side tracked by an idea that could deal with his problems. Bartowski was no match for Panzer, hell, he didn't know anyone who was, which was why he was still trying to find a way to get that key off him, so this was perfect! If Panzer killed Bartowski, he'd be out of the way, but if by some chance Bartowski managed to succeed, he'd have the key, and Bartowski would be almost certainly be out of action for a while, so it was a win/win in his book!

With that, Shaw went on to say that the digital key that was needed to open the lock box was in Paris, so someone from the team needed to go there and retrieve it. At that he looked at Chuck and said "I noted in your file that you've said that you'd love to see Paris, Chuck, this would be an easy trip for you, duck over on the Red Eye tonight, see the sights, pick up the key and come back."

Really? He was so stupid that he thought that anyone would fall for him suddenly buddying up to them? Chuck wasn't in the mood to play games with Shaw, so he just said "I don't have the time to go to France on a sightseeing trip, and I can't spare anyone on my team for that either, you'll have to go himself."

Shaw was smug as he came back with "Oh, I'm afraid I can't go myself, I'm too well known in Paris, I'd be made as soon as I landed."

Chuck had had it "Oh for fuck's sake, Director, do you have any agents in Paris at the moment?"

"Indeed we do Agent Carmichael, Shaw, what's the location for this key, I'll get someone to pick it up straight away."

Shaw was trapped now "Well, the key may not actually be in Paris yet, the latest word is that the Ring is in the process of transporting it to Paris."

They all just stared at him and Jane asked "When, exactly, is this key being transported to Paris?"

"A First Class passenger on the Red Eye flight tonight supposedly has it."

"Explain yourself Shaw! Why were you proposing that Special Agent in Charge Carmichael get on a plane without telling him the truth, that he'd need to engage an enemy agent on the plane with no preparation?"

"I thought it would be better to avoid making him nervous by telling him ahead of time, as I was given to understand that he doesn't have any real field experience. It should be a simple job, just knock out the courier and take the key."

"Well if it's that simple, then you can do it, the E-tickets will be waiting for you when you get to the airport!"

"That wouldn't be a good idea Ma'am, the Ring agent may recognise me."

"Very well Shaw, if you're incapable of doing this 'simple job' yourself, pack up and report to Langley in the morning, this operation is cancelled, I will be informing the DCIA of why this was necessary."

"No, wait Ma'am, I believe that I can do it, but it would be sensible to have support along in case the Ring has more than one person on the plane. I believe that the best solution would be for Agent Walker and I to be travelling as a couple, as I'm sure that we'd be able to handle anything that comes up between us."

Chuck restrained Sarah before she could launch herself out of the seat to attack the tool, but while she was still being held back by Chuck she addressed Jane "As Special Agent in Charge Carmichael and I have both informed Mister Shaw more than once, Director, I am not prepared to work directly with him in any capacity, and I do not believe that our other agents are, either."

Carina cut in at that point "Agent Walker is correct on that Ma'am, for me at least, but I am prepared to go as backup for the mission. I won't use Shaw's plan though, I will not have any contact with him in any way, shape or form at the airport or on the plane. I will observe his mission anonymously. If he manages to succeed, I'll just go along for the ride, but if he fails, as I expect he will, I'll take over the mission to get the key."

The Director looked at her. "Are you sure about this Agent, sorry, Senior Special Agent Miller? You won't have any support up there, the risk factor will be high."

Carina nodded. "Yes Ma'am, if this intel is as important as Shaw says I'll make sure we get the key, but I won't promise not to shoot him if it isn't worth the effort."

She smiled grimly as she nodded at that. "I may help you if that's the case!" She looked at the others. "If that's all, Shaw, get moving! Senior Special Agent Miller, good luck, and thank you."

Casey escorted Shaw out, and they went back into the Dungeon. Mei Ling's first words when they walked in were "You're not going into that by yourself, I'm coming with you!" and Vinnie added "And so am I."

As it made sense to have backups that no-one knew about and there was little time to get ready for an international flight, no-one wasted time arguing, they just booked three separate tickets for them on the flight while they packed their bags.


	16. Shaw Versus Shaw

**Usual disclaimers, no rights to any characters portrayed, this isn't the real world and it's not a Disney Princess story.**

Pasadena – July 2009

No-one was really surprised when Shaw ignored his instructions and went straight up to Carina in the Airport's departure lounge, but when he grabbed her arm roughly and tried to tell her that she'd do what he told her to, she kneed him in the family jewels hard enough to leave him rolling around on the floor in agony. She got a round of applause from men and women alike as she stalked off, muttering angrily. Airport security grabbed him and took him away, so Carina became the primary for this mission.

Chuck got into the system and added records to put Shaw on the terrorist watch lists under another name, to ensure that he would be held there until after their plane took off once they started checking into him. He sent a private message to Jane to ask her hold off bailing Shaw out until their agents had taken off, and just got a winky face response. He monitored the systems and smiled as he showed Sarah that she'd dodged the calls from Homeland Security, so Shaw stayed in detention until he contacted his sponsors in the CIA via the dodgy 'lawyer' that he called to represent him. As well as keeping Shaw out of the way long enough to stop him screwing everything up, that gave them a few more names to look into.

Sitting in First Class on the plane, Carina, Mei Ling and Vinnie were wearing Augmented Reality glasses with cameras, and they were all scanning the passengers and cabin staff. Their feeds were being fed back to the Dungeon, where they were running everyone through facial recognition software and Chuck was checking the Intersect databases for a match.

They didn't get any hits on the guy, Panzer, who was in the seat that was supposed to be the Ring courier's, but there was no question that he was in the business, the man was trained muscle. Built like Mike but a few inches shorter, the way he moved said that he knew how to handle himself, so the fact that Shaw had tried to set Chuck up to go after him without any idea of what he was up against made most of them want to hurt the tool, bad. The others accepted that they'd have to stand in line behind Sarah for that privilege.

While they didn't get any hits on the courier though, they did get a hit on one of the flight attendants, she was a freelance assassin, Serena Horton, so if she wasn't there to kill one of the First Class passengers during the flight (which would attract way too much attention), she was probably there as backup for the courier.

When they didn't find anything about anyone else in First Class, Carina decided that she'd have to seduce Panzer to get the key, it was the only option that was viable in the environment they had on the plane. They did have a problem in that they didn't have any real information about the key or where it was though, and they needed to get that. One advantage that they did have was that they were in constant communications with all three of them via the satellite communications gear that Stephen and Leslie came up with.

* * *

As soon as his contacts got him out, Shaw went straight to the Shadow Security office and was threatening Alex to try and make her let him into the base when Casey came through the door from the main office (after ducking through the Shadow bunker from the Dungeon) and grabbed him by the throat, throwing him up against the wall. Chuck, Sarah, Zondra and Dasha came in the front door and Chuck barked "Major! Not up here, take him into the base!" Casey just nodded and hauled Shaw into his office and down into the Intersect bunker without letting go of his throat.

When they were in the meeting room of downstairs, Chuck demanded that Shaw tell them everything he knew about the key and where the courier may have it. Shaw sneered at him "Why should I tell you anything Bartowski?" He noticed Walker hold up a finger as if she were counting as Bartowski spoke.

"Because you screwed up the mission when you went against your orders and got yourself arrested by making a scene at the airport, so now my agent has to get the key off the courier. Tell us what you know about where he has the key!"

Shaw sneered at him again. "Fuck you Bartowski! Your whore can try to screw it out of him like she usually does!" He saw Walker hold up another finger and smile as Bartowski turned to one of the other women.

Chuck asked Zondra. "Can you see if you can induce him to be more helpful please Agent Rizzo?"

Zondra nodded, saying "Yes, sir" demurely as she sashayed towards Shaw. His smile grew as she leant in so he got a good view down her blouse, but that changed to a scream when she drove a knife through his hand into the conference table. A slap hard enough to loosen his teeth cut off his scream, and Sarah held up a third finger with a big smile.

Chuck barked "What do you know about where he has the key?"

Shaw gasped "Fuck you!" and Chuck said "Zondra?"

Zondra smiled as she grabbed Shaw's other hand and produced another knife and Shaw shouted "Stop, stop, I'll tell you!"

She looked disappointed as she let got of his hand and stepped back and Chuck said "Well?"

When Shaw didn't say anything, Chuck looked at Zondra and she stepped forward again.

Shaw screamed "Get that crazy bitch away from me! I need medical attention! I have a fucking knife through my hand!"

His blood ran cold at the menacing tone of Chuck's voice as he said "You'll need a lot more if you don't start talking!"

That was enough to break him, and he spilled everything he knew about Panzer, the key and the fact that the key was in his checked luggage, so they'd need the tag for his luggage that was with his ticket, proving that he was a failure as an agent as well as a human being.

Chuck called the information through to Carina and the others while Casey pulled the knife out of Shaw's hand, carefully wiping both sides of the blade off on Shaw's arm before he politely handed it to Zondra, who thanked him with a smile as she took it from him. Casey threw a field dressing and bandage at Shaw and dragged him off to a holding cell.

* * *

On the plane, Carina formulated her plan. Because of the probable backup Panzer had on the plane, they would have to be discreet, which meant that they couldn't just tranq him as that would attract too much attention. The only way she could see this working was for her to go over and engage Panzer, lift his ticket (she was as good a pickpocket as Sarah, as that was part of how she'd supported herself when she was a teenager on the streets) and pass it off to Mei Ling to identify the luggage tag, then return the ticket while she was distracting him. As their stealthiest person, Mei Ling would get into the baggage hold, retrieve the key and return to the cabin, passing it off to Vinnie for safe keeping in case anyone made her.

The plan was good, there was still an element of risk of course, but it minimised that risk for all of them, so they went with it. Carina pulled her part off without a problem, babbling away like a horny bimbo who was into muscles, she distracted him enough by stroking his arm and hinting to him that she wanted to join the mile high club that he didn't notice a thing as she lifted, and then returned his ticket. She didn't even have to kiss the pig, the worst she had to endure was him grabbing her leg in what was presumably meant to be a caress.

Mei Ling had no trouble slipping past the flight attendants (including the assassin) to get down to the baggage hold, and she got into Panzer's bag and located the key within ten minutes. The worst part for her was seeing the disgusting porn he had in his bag, but she was back up and had passed off the key to Vinnie in a little over fifteen minutes, which then let Carina disengage from Panzer by saying that she better get back before her 'friend' woke up.

Using the 'friend' excuse meant that she had to spend enough time talking to the older man she was sitting next to on the plane and as they were leaving the plane at Orly to pull off the idea that they were together, but he wasn't too much of a letch, just a man who appreciated attention from a beautiful woman like her. At Orly, Carina was taken off to answer a few questions when they reached passport control, and Mei Ling and Vinnie slipped away while no-one was looking, so they were all punted straight back out to CI's G550 for the flight home with Panzer and everyone else being none the wiser.

Once they were in the air again, Casey went to the holding cell and frog marched Shaw out of the base, and the building, telling him not to come back.

* * *

When the others got back, they observed all the proper containment protocols as they opened the lock box, and then they went through its contents. A few things in the lock box raised questions, so they had Jane call Shaw back in from Los Feliz. When he arrived, Casey grabbed him and marched him into the meeting room, pushing him into the same chair he sat in earlier.

As soon as they were settled, the screen lit up with the images of General Beckman and Jane. Jane started off by saying "Agent Shaw has made a number of accusations against you and your team Special Agent Carmichael, can you explain about his arrest at the airport, and how he was injured?"

Chuck looked at the screen "We had nothing to do with the arrest at the airport Director Bentley, that was all his own doing, this is the video from the Airport's security cameras." He played the clip of Shaw going up to Carina and grabbing her as he was speaking aggressively to her, followed by her giving him a knee to the groin and Airport Security running up to drag him away.

Jane said "Would you care to explain that Shaw? You were told not to go anywhere near Special Agent Miller, and yet you caused a scene that almost blew her cover as well as your own. How can you claim that the Intersect team had anything to do with your arrest when it was clearly your actions that caused it?"

Shaw blurted out "They put me on the terrorist watch list! That made me miss the flight and it took me hours to contact anyone to get me out of there!"

Jane just asked "Special Agent Carmichael?"

Chuck shook his head "I am not aware of anyone here doing that Director Bentley, we can check the lists though." With that he brought up the terrorist watch lists and looked for the name 'Daniel Shaw' with no result, so Jane asked Shaw what he was talking about.

Shaw spat out "It was under the name 'Roger Moore'!" Some of them sniggered as Chuck brought up an entry, supposedly added six months ago, which showed an image that looked much like Shaw.

Jane said "It appears fairly obvious to me that this was an understandable case of mistaken identity from an old record Shaw, and I can assure you I will be noting how your actions jeopardised the mission, as well as how you tried to cover up your own failure with false accusations. Now Special Agent Carmichael, is there any truth in Shaw's other accusation, that you stabbed him the last time he was here?"

"Yes and no Director Bentley, I asked Agent Shaw repeatedly for the information that was needed for Special Agent Miller to complete the mission, but he flat refused to give us that information, so he had to be persuaded. This is the video of what happened."

When the video was finished, Jane said "It is disturbing that you would use these methods on one of our agents Special Agent Carmichael, why didn't you try contacting me to have me order Shaw to provide the information?"

"We did tried to contact you after Agent Miller advised us of what had happened Director Bentley, but we couldn't reach you, and we weren't certain how long we could maintain contact with Agent Miller. Quite frankly, I was angry that my agent had been put in this position, so when Shaw turned up and kept refusing to give us the information that we needed to assist her, I made the call to treat him as an enemy operative."

Shaw went to say something at that, until Chuck fixed him with a look that chilled him to the bone and he clamped his mouth shut.

Jane nodded "Oh yes, I was out of cell coverage areas for a few hours that night. While I can't say that I am happy with the approach you took, given the video you have shown me, treating him as an enemy operative perhaps wasn't an unreasonable decision on your part. Could you supply me with a copy of that, and also the Airport video for our records, please Agent Carmichael?"

Chuck nodded "Yes Ma'am."

"Have you discovered anything of value in the lock box?"

"The information on the disks that were in the lock box was four years old, but still useful Ma'am, we're liaising with our people in Europe, as well as the DGSI, DGSE and Interpol, to narrow the noose on the Ring's people over there, primarily in France."

Shaw jumped up at that, screaming "This is my operation! You had no authority to open that lock box or look into any of this without me!"

Jane barked at him "Sit down and shut up Shaw! When Agent Miller returned with the key, as she promised she would, the CIA gave Agent Carmichael full authority to proceed with all dispatch before the Ring could close down or move any of their operations which may have been compromised. And I shouldn't need to remind you of this, but I obviously do, it was never YOUR operation, it was the CIA's operation, but for now it has been handed over to the Intersect Project." She nodded to Chuck to continue.

"Thank you Ma'am, we've merged the information on the disks with the later information, such as it is, to configure the search engines to identify Ring activities, as results come in, we're evaluating them, and using them to optimise the search engine behaviour where appropriate."

"Thank you Special Agent Carmichael, is there anything else at this time?"

"Actually, there is Director Bentley!" came from Sarah as she stood, picking something up from the table and heading for Shaw. Chuck went with her, knowing what this was about.

Sarah held up the wedding rings that had been in an envelope in the bottom of the lock box, asking "Did you send a married woman into deep cover in an organisation like the Ring by herself without any support for two years Shaw?"

Chuck braced himself to take Shaw out if he attacked her, but aside from snatching the rings off her he didn't do anything, he just looked at the rings and said "She was Evelyn Shaw, Eve, My Wife."

He looked up at Sarah and said quietly "We both made the same mistake Sarah, we both fell in love with spies." From his expression, he believed that they were sharing a moment there, even though Sarah was staring at him in horror and disgust, but Chuck put an end to that when he asked. "Did you know about the Ring's perpetual loyalty tests for women before you sent your wife in there Shaw?"

Silence came crashing down in the room, as everyone who'd been there when they made Shaw tell what he knew about the Ring knew the answer to that.

Shaw wanted to lie, but even he knew that there was no point in trying so he quietly said. "Yes."

Diane hadn't been in the loop for that video conference, but she could tell from the anger in the room that this was something significant, so she asked. "Agent Carmichael, what are you talking about?"

Chuck was having trouble controlling his disgust and rage enough to answer, so Carina did "When Director Bentley made Shaw tell us about the Ring, he told us about what he'd been hearing from when he first he started looking into them. About how from when female agents join the Ring, they are passed around their superiors, and anyone else they're given to and told to look after. They have to do anything and everything they're told to without complaint to prove their 'loyalty'."

Neither Diane nor Jane made any attempt to hide their disgust and Jane asked. "Do you need Shaw for anything else special Agent Carmichael?"

"No Ma'am."

"Shaw, report to Los Feliz and await further orders!"

Chuck glanced at Casey, who nodded and pulled Shaw up out of the seat, frog marching him from the room.

* * *

Looking back at the screen, Chuck said "You know that there's a good chance he'll run, don't you?"

Jane nodded "Yes, but I'd be interested to hear your reasoning Agent Carmichael?"

"Well firstly, every male CIA Agent I've ever met believes that he's god's gift to women and can't imagine any woman resisting him. When he made advances at Agent Walker though, she just shot him down and treated him like the pig that he is, that was the first blow to his pride."

"Second, he came in here with the expectation that we'd all bow down to him and do whatever he said, because he was a CIA Special Agent, but we all put him in his place, me most of all I'm afraid, because of the way he was going after Agent Walker."

"Third, he obviously believed that as his superior in the CIA, you would back him up in any disagreements with other agencies, no matter what he did, but you were coming down on our side right from the start."

"Finally, and probably the most significant, was his wife's rings. Now that it's on record about what happens to women who go into the Ring, he would have been desperate to get rid of that evidence. I don't know how the CIA's run, but I expect that proof, in the form of his wife's wedding rings being in there with the last of the intel she'd collected, that he'd knowingly sent his own wife into something like that and leave her to fend for herself in there for two years to further his own career would kill off any hope of advancement. I'm sure that someone like Shaw would have seen himself as being at least a Deputy Director as soon as he managed to pull off some major operation like this, so this would be a major blow to him."

Jane nodded thoughtfully "Thank you Agent Carmichael, you've presented some new angles that I hadn't considered. I've sent agents to his tracker's location to pick him up, what do you think he'll do?"

Chuck considered for a moment "It will basically come down to just how big his ego is. If he looks at it logically, he's likely to run, because he'll know he's finished, and may be facing punishment. If his ego is still what's driving him though, he'll turn up at Los Feliz, confident that Special Agent Daniel Shaw can't lose. The fact that he believed that he still had chance with Agent Walker when he knew that we had seen proof that he'd sent his own wife in there to be used and abused for two years implies that his ego will win out."

Jane nodded again "We'll see soon enough, thank you Agent Carmichael."

* * *

With that, they cut the links, but Sarah suddenly grabbed Chuck's hand and dragged him back to the Dungeon. It was obvious that something was upsetting her, so the others followed.

In the Dungeon, Sarah asked Chuck to bring up Evelyn Shaw's files, and given how upset she was, he didn't ask questions, just got into the CIA's archives to locate them and bring them up on screen.

As soon as the woman's image came up on screen, Sarah started crying. Chuck pulled her into his arms to comfort her, asking her "What is it?"

Sarah pointed to the image on screen "I terminated Evelyn Shaw as a double agent in Paris in 2005, while the CAT Squad were being broken up. I was a mess because the CAT squad was being torn apart and I was worried about what my next assignment would be, with good reason obviously, so I didn't question it too much when Graham didn't give me anything more than a picture and a location. I just accepted the idea that they didn't know what name she was using, because it wasn't uncommon for me to go through half a dozen identities in a week back then as I took on short missions, go in, do something and move on."

"It didn't click until Shaw said that the woman he put in there was his own wife, because this woman almost welcomed death, I've never seen such haunted eyes before or since, and when he said that, it occurred to me that nothing could be worse than being in a hell like that for years, knowing that it was your own husband who put you there. It shook me up so much that I went to let her go, but then she went for what I thought was a gun, and I shot her. The gendarmes must have been close because I heard sirens coming straight away, so I didn't have a chance to confirm the kill, or whether she had a weapon, I just ran."

That made Chuck go back into the CIA systems and dig up the kill order. When he located it, he discovered that there was also a video attached to the file and played it. It was a recording of the termination, and from that and the images that Sarah had been sent, there was no question that it was the same woman.

While they were thinking about what Shaw had done to his wife, Chuck had a realisation. "Shit, if Shaw finds out that it was you who carried out the order to terminate his wife, he's bound to come after you for taking her from him, even though he was the one who'd already killed her on the inside. We need to do something about him."

They all nodded at that, and Chuck looked at Sarah "We need to tell Jane."

She didn't really like the idea, but nodded, as it was the logical thing to do, so they headed down the small meeting room.

As soon as the Jane and Diane were up, Chuck jumped into it "Do you have Shaw in custody yet Director Bentley?"

She shook his head "No, it appeared that he was heading in, as you expected, but he got a phone call and pulled over. A few minutes later the trackers in his phone went dead, and when our people got to the location, his car was there, but he was gone."

She watched them looking at each other, worried "What is it Agent Carmichael?"

"We've had a worrying development in this Director" He looked at Sarah and she nodded resignedly, and looking at the screen, she told her and Diane pretty much what she'd told Chuck and the others, adding that she'd got Chuck to bring up Evelyn Shaw's records to confirm that the woman she'd been ordered to terminate was her.

Jane looked disturbed about this "Director Graham ordered this?" She hadn't missed that Chuck could and did access CIA records, but that was a minor issue at that point.

Sarah nodded "Yes, Ma'am, it should be in the records for April 2005."

When she brought up the files and compared the images from the kill order and Evelyn Shaw's file, she had no doubt that Sarah was correct about who it was she'd terminated.

The question about WHY she'd been ordered to terminate her was disturbing, but it'd take some time to get access to the records that could answer that question, and there were more immediate issues to worry about "You know that Shaw will come after you if he finds out about this, Agent Walker?"

She nodded "Yes, we've discussed that Ma'am."

"I presume you're taking all necessary measures to ensure she's protected Agent Carmichael?"

Chuck nodded "Yes, Ma'am"

With that they wound up the discussion and broke the connections.

* * *

After they went back to the operations centre Chuck was staring at the image of Evelyn Shaw, and then he suddenly swore and called for Sydney to come to the Dungeon.

When Sydney arrived, Chuck pointed to the images up on screen and asked "Sydney, is that Lynn Mason?"

Sydney peered at the image and said "I think so…..?"

Sarah asked "Does she have a bullet wound around here?" She indicated the area where she'd shot Evelyn Shaw.

This time Sydney didn't hesitate "Yes."

Chuck grabbed the keyboard and checked something, then sent out orders to ready the G550 and lodge a flight plan for Austin, Texas, talking as he did so "Sydney, go pack an overnight bag please, just in case. I'd like you to come with us to Texas, Lynn knows you so it will make her more comfortable."

She nodded and headed upstairs.

He glanced at Sarah. "Lynn is in Austin, Texas, working for our other shadow group security company, she joined in two thousand and five. She must have been taken to hospital and then gotten away before the CIA or Ring could locate her to finish her off and made her way back to the States."

He picked up the phone to call Gertrude and ask her to get ready for a possibly overnight trip to Austin, too, before sending Sarah, Zondra and Carina upstairs to do the same. With them getting ready (Sarah would get his things ready as well), he called Auntie Di to tell her that Evelyn Shaw wasn't dead, and in fact she was part of the 'family'.

* * *

On the G550, they filled Sydney and Gertrude in on what happened back in two thousand and five, as well as what had happened to Lynn in the two years leading up to that and the fact that her ex-husband was back on the scene causing trouble. They were all spies, they understood kill orders, and knew that Lynn did as well.

Gertrude and Sydney also knew that they wouldn't be going to Austin if there wasn't some benefit for Lynn in this, because they'd known Chuck for seven years now, and they had a fairly good idea of what made him tick.

When Lynn walked into the meeting room and saw the woman who'd almost killed her, she stopped, but Sydney signalled her that it was alright, so she came in and sat down. After Sydney came around to give her a hug and a kiss, Sarah and Lynn discussed what happened that night, and the kill order. Lynn confirmed that she HAD in fact been going for a gun, because it had only been when she was faced with death that she realised that she actually wanted to live.

As Chuck had surmised, the gendarmes had arrived right after Sarah ran off and rushed Lynn to hospital. No-one had grabbed her purse, so she was admitted as the French equivalent of a Jane Doe, and she was lucid enough to pretend to have temporary amnesia. By the time the gendarmes went back to the site, someone had stolen the purse, so her identity was lost.

Lynn knew that the CIA or the Ring, whoever it was who had sent Sarah, would make sure that they finished the job, so as soon as she came out of the anaesthetic and was able to get out of bed, she grabbed some clothes and ran, grabbing the money and passports that she had hidden away and getting out of France as quickly as she could. She took the train to England and then flew to Mexico and used a pipeline she knew about to get into Texas.

While she was recovering in Texas, she'd created the Lynn Mason identity and started trying to establish a new life for herself, approaching investigation and security firms where her mixture of analyst and agent skills would be useful. When she came to their firm here, it was obvious that she was a burned agent, so they'd checked her out (through Chuck, but she didn't know that at the time) and when nothing too bad showed up, they took her on because she had good skills. She'd been there ever since.

They were all thoughtful as they considered how it had happened. Chuck was the one who broke the silence. "How do you feel about your ex-husband?"

Lynn looked at him "You mean the one who sent me in there to be a sex slave for those sick bastards for two years to further his own career, and then sold me out to get killed?"

"Yeah, that one."

"I hope he's still alive so I can kill the bastard!"

Chuck nodded "As far as we know he's still alive, so we might be able to help you with that. He ran after an operation with us didn't go the way he wanted, and we found out that the Agent that he had sent into the Ring was a married woman when we got into your lock box and found your rings. He told us that you were his wife, trying to get sympathy I think, but it backfired. I believe that he's actually with the ring now….. By the way, you didn't know about the sex slave angle before you went in there, did you?"

"Do you think I would have agreed to go in there knowing that? No, of course not!"

"Well that's something else you owe Daniel for, because he did!"

Lynn went white "No…. He sent me to those animals KNOWING what was going to happen to me? He argued that I couldn't waste my sacrifice by getting out when I managed to contact him after I'd been passed around for a few months, but he knew that they'd do that to me BEFORE he sent me in there?"

Sarah, Carina and Zondra were nodding sympathetically, repeating what he'd said about hearing about that when he first started looking into the Ring, and Sydney went to hold her as she cried.

When she managed to compose herself, Chuck asked Lynn if she knew why the kill order would have been issued on her. Lynn nodded "Yes, I had been extracting information about the Ring's movements and activities and leaving it in dead drops for Daniel. Then, early two thousand and five, I discovered evidence of high level connections between the CIA and the Ring. After a couple of months I managed to find out the code name of the senior CIA connection, and soon after I sent that to Daniel, you showed up to kill me" she nodded at Sarah.

Chuck asked "Do you remember the code name of the CIA connection?"

"Yes, it was Shaka."

Chuck had a flash and shook his head "Shit, well that explains the kill order! Langston Graham WAS Shaka!"

Something else occurred to him then "Did you manage to find out who he was dealing with in the Ring?"

"I never found out anything but another code name, 'Rasputin', does that mean anything to you?"

Chuck shook his head "No, I'm not getting anything on that." He hesitated, and then asked "Lynn, will you come back to Los Angeles with us, and help us chase down the ring? Everything you gave to your husband is gone, so what you have in your head is the best information we have on them. The last disks that you had in your lock box took us far further than we'd managed to get before that, so you'd be a great help. And if you really want a chance to go after Daniel, that's where he is and we'll help you."

Lynn looked at him "How long are we talking about Chuck?"

"At least as long as it takes for you to tell us what you know about them, but I was hoping that you'd join us permanently, we can do with someone with your skills. If you have a partner here I'm sure we could find a job for them as well."

Lynn shook her head. "No, after Daniel and those bastards in the Ring, I'm not sure that I could trust any man enough to get close to one again. There's no-one keeping me here, and Texas never really grew on me, it was mainly just somewhere to hide from the CIA and the Ring. I'm happy to move to Los Angeles, but what about my job here? They wouldn't just release me would they?"

Chuck smiled "Between me, Sarah and Gertrude, I'm sure we can get them to release you, so why don't you pack what you need for the foreseeable future and we can get everything else moved for you. Do you own where you live, or are you renting?"

"Renting, tying up your money in a place doesn't make any sense when you may need to run at any time."

He nodded "That makes it easier, we'll have someone see about getting you out of your lease or subletting the place for you. Do you need a hand packing your things? I expect that Sydney and the others would be glad to help?" He raised an eyebrow at the women and they nodded, saying 'Of course!'

Lynn smiled "A few more pairs of hands would be a help, thanks!"

* * *

With that, Lynn said goodbye to a few friends and headed back to her place with Sydney, Carina and Zondra, while Chuck, Sarah and Gertrude made the arrangements to transfer Lynn to Shadow Security in Los Angeles, made the arrangements for the movers and to handle her lease, and then booked them all into a hotel out near the airport.

As things were packed up at Lynne's, they were sent to the airport to be loaded into the G550. Everything was packed and they were back at the hotel by ten that night. They dropped the keys and paperwork off to the people who would be handling everything else for the move, then they went out for a late supper.

At the restaurant, their table attracted a lot of attention, because Sarah, Carina, Zondra, Sydney and Lynn were all beauties, but between Chuck's dangerous look and the very obvious and angry 'Not Interested!' looks they shot at anyone who seemed inclined to come up to introduce themselves, they weren't bothered.

Lynn's story came out over supper. "I was an analyst when I married Daniel, but that apparently didn't meet his expectations, so he cajoled me into becoming an agent so we could became 'the next Turners', whatever that is, because supposedly there would be no stopping us then." She sighed at that and said "I should have seen the signs and ran back then when I still had a chance!", Carina jumped in with a laugh to try to pull her out of her depression. "Shit, I'd be terrified if Leslie tried to become an agent, the man's a genius, but him with a gun? The possibilities for friendly fire would be horrendous!"

Sarah laughed as well "Well THIS one was supposedly a civilian when I found him again, if you can believe it!"

Lynn turned to her "What do you mean by 'found him again', Sarah?"

Sarah smiled at her "Well, we were literally childhood sweethearts, our mothers are best friends and Chuck's only six months older than me, so we grew up together. Then my father screwed up a con when I was seven and got my mother arrested and sent to prison, so he took me and ran. I spent eight years on the road with him as a con artist until I got him to stop so I could finish school and have a chance at going to university, but even though he'd promised not to, he went back to the con game and got himself arrested again. Graham caught me and convinced me that he had my mother in custody, and if I didn't do what he wanted he'd take it out on her, so I did. It was only about two years ago when I was sent after this one that I found out that my mother was safe, and the two of us were finally reunited. Of course he WASN'T the bumbling civilian he was supposed to be, he's one of the best there is, mind you, with the Frost Queen as his mother, that's not so much of a surprise."

Lynn looked confused again "The Frost Queen?"

"You may have heard of of her as Agent Frost? Graham used the Frost Queen's legend to fabricate the Agent Frost identity and set her up." Lynn's eyes went wide and Sarah grinned "Yeah, that's my mother in law!"

Lynn looked at the others "What about you guys? What amazing partners do you have?"

Gertie laughed, "I don't know about amazing, but I'm with Marco" and Zondra piped up with "and I'm with Vinnie." Lynn looked at Sydney and she shook her head with a sad smile "No, I still haven't found a man who's worth the effort, except maybe Chuck, but he's taken and Sarah can kick my arse."

In the morning, it was only a short trip to the airport and they were back in L.A. before lunch. They had been planning on putting Lynn up in one of the guest rooms in the Keep until she got settled, but by the time they reached L.A. it was settled that she'd move into Sydney's apartment with her.

* * *

Pasadena – July 2009

Because they were expecting the Ring to come after them, through Shaw or otherwise, they reconfigured the feeds from the external cameras that they had set up for a couple of blocks all around them to generate alerts 24/7 and they allocated people to watch the screens all the time as well.

Chuck couldn't help worrying about the danger Shaw represented to Sarah. By himself, he wasn't bright enough to be dangerous, but if he was being coached and directed by others who were, well that could be dangerous.

The issue of Evelyn's kill order brought up the question about what else Graham had been involved in that might come back to bite them. Graham's original files were probably the only place that they'd ever get the answers about the plans for all of them, and he'd been interfering with Chuck and Sarah's families since the eighties, Carina since she was sixteen, and even the way that Casey had coerced into joining the NSA in '89 had a smell of Graham's methods about it, it certainly wasn't approved NSA practice to do something like that. If they wanted to get ahead of this, they needed to find the history of what had been done.

Chuck diverted time to troll through the CIA's archives, and had others earmarked after that, as they knew that the CIA, DEA, NSA, Military and Senate had all been heavily infested with Fulcrum and Ring people, so they probably had to expect that the FBI, DIA, Homeland Security and the rest were infested as well. The immediate problem, though, was that they KNEW that Graham had been in bed with all the wrong people, and his legacy was a time bomb that they couldn't find the clock for.

While they wanted to comb through all the archives, the current thorn in their side was Daniel Shaw, so Chuck was concentrating on the period of 2002 – 2006, to work out what the hell he was up to. Luckily, Graham had also been egotistical and thought he was brighter than everyone else, so he didn't make a good enough effort to hide his private files, and once Chuck got through the layers that Graham had used to hide them, he had the template to get into the rest of his files.

The files on Daniel Shaw weren't that much of a surprise, because they confirmed that Graham had promoted Daniel Shaw to the rank of Special Agent, and made him the one in charge of any and all investigations into the Ring, BECAUSE he knew that Shaw was lazy and egotistical, and therefore wouldn't make the effort to uncover anything important. This let Graham kill any legitimate investigations by the simple mechanism of funnelling ANYTHING to do with the Ring into the black hole of Shaw's investigation, where they would disappear. What Graham didn't factor into the equation, though, was the fact that Evelyn Shaw, the ex-analyst, was actually a much better spy than her husband ever was.

When Daniel Shaw told him that he'd managed to insert his wife into the Ring, Graham, or rather Shaka, immediately warned his buddy Rasputin (Who they had yet to identify. There was something on the edge of his consciousness that was telling him that he should know who this was, but he just couldn't put his finger on it.) about her, so she'd been passed around more than any woman in the Ring in an attempt to keep her too busy and abused to do any investigations. When Shaw kept giving Graham proof that she WAS still doing a hell of a job, even with everything she was going through, he kept passing that on to Rasputin, who in turn kept ramping up the abuse that she was being subjected to.

Her death warrant was signed the moment that Shaw ran to Graham, eager to tell him that Eve had uncovered the code name of the key Ring contact within the CIA, someone called Shaka. The next time that there was a hole in Sarah's schedule that aligned with Evelyn Shaw being in the target area, Sarah had the kill order for Evelyn.

While Chuck was looking into this (and he was showing Lynn the files that proved how effective she'd been against the Ring), he was also working with Lynn and the others into uncovering the Ring, and they were watching the increasing activity outside. Chuck was burying the fact that he was getting the Ring teams trying to watch them arrested and put away on criminal and terrorist charges by feeding the police information on criminals throughout the entire area, so the arrest rates were going through the roof.

* * *

Pasadena – September 2009

The problem was that someone seemed to be serious about putting the pressure on them, because no matter how many they got arrested and taken off the streets for the duration, they were being replaced straight away. After a couple of months, though, they started changing their tactics, they started using bait, in the form of Daniel Shaw. They started to see Shaw's new black Tesla (the one the Ring gave him to replace the one the made him dump to prevent the CIA tracking him) around the area, and it was like waving a red rag at a bull to them, especially Lynn.

Even though Carina and Zondra knew that Shaw was being used as bait, they still tailed him to the building in the out of the way business development that he ran to. They did call it in when they started following him, and stayed back to watch when they reached the building, but when the first ones to arrive were Sarah and Lynn in Carina's Lamborghini, they all decided to give Lynn her chance for justice. Carina and Zondra quickly changed into the battledress, body armour and helmets that they always carried in the boot and armed up.

Between Sarah, Carina and the toys they'd been provided, there weren't many buildings that they couldn't break into, and they were soon inside. They quickly took down the dozen Ring agents who'd engaged them on the ground floor with the suppressed AS VALs before attaching the remote access devices (all of their cars were equipped to be relays for the remote access devices) for Anna and the others to take over the systems, disabling the lifts and heading up the fire stairs.

On the first floor, they presumed that Anna had unlocked the door, so they said 'Thanks Anna' and went through. They came under fire in the first open area that they went through and they had to take cover, as there were at least two to three times as many Ring agents up here.

While they were engaging the enemy, Sarah saw something out of the corner of her eye, and when she looked, she saw Shaw mockingly wave and head through a door way. She called to the others "Shaw's getting away! I'm going after him to stop him. Don't worry Lynn, I won't kill him, that's your right." With that, she broke off and ran for the doorway Shaw had gone though. As she ran though, she heard the door close and lock behind her, and it had sounded rather solid, Shit! This building obviously wasn't what it appeared to be!

The next thing she noticed was that she wasn't alone, as Shaw was still in the room with her. As soon as he started talking, she knew that he wasn't just an pompous fool with a god complex any more, he was absolutely fucking crazy.

Shaw started ranting at her. "I've seen the video Walker, I saw you kill my Eve, and you're going to die for that! First, though, you're going to show me what you showed Graham, Larkin, Bartowski and everyone else, just how good a fuck you really are! Hell, if you're as good as they all say, I may just keep you around for a while and let you make up for the years that I've been without my Eve, because you murdered her!"

"Do you really think I'm going to let you lay a finger, or anything else, on me Shaw? There's no way I'd ever let anything like you touch me! Not even before I'd met Chuck."

Shaw let loose a maniacal cackle. "There's no way you can stop me Walker, it's not just the NSA that has the Intersect, and I have the Ring's Intersect in me now, you can't do a thing against the power of the Intersect!"

Sarah smiled grimly "Let's see about that, shall we?"

Shaw moved in, supremely confident that she'd be down and he'd be tearing her clothes off in seconds, but as he closed on her, she just kneecapped him. When he grabbed his pistol, she shot it out of his hand, taking half of his hand with it, then she turned back to the door, saying "Just wait there Shaw, there's someone here who wants to talk to you."

She tried calling Anna, but when she couldn't get any signal, she swore, thinking 'I guess that explains why she hasn't gotten control of the systems yet' and pulled out her digital lock breaking tool to try and get that door disabled.

* * *

Two minivans had turned up downstairs by then, and Chuck, Casey, Dasha, Mary, Mei Ling, Vinnie, Mike, Zoe, Marco, Gertie, Javier and Rick had piled out and run for the building, as they could hear the fire fight going on on the first floor. Chuck had suspected that this was no ordinary building though, and he wasn't about to waste any time getting through obstacles here, so the guys were were all carrying SOCOM M32 Mk 14 grenade launchers, as well as the VALs. They announced their presence by blowing in the front doors.

While they were enabling one of the lifts, Chuck gave them their orders. Rick and Dasha would stay on the ground floor to cut off any escapes and try to hold off any reinforcements that may arrive, he and Vinnie would take the next floor, Casey, Mary, Mei Ling and Javier the next, and Mike, Zoe, Gertie and Marco the top floor. It went as planned, he and Vinnie jumped out of the lift on the first floor and took out the ones keeping the girls pinned down from behind. Carina pointed at the door that had closed and locked behind Sarah, shouting that she went through there, chasing Shaw.

Chuck called Sarah (reasoning correctly that if the building was a Faraday, the radios would still work inside), and told her to let him know when she was well away from the door, as soon as she did, he blew the door in with a 40mm High Explosive round and entered the room. Sarah called Lynn in when the door was gone.

When Shaw saw Lynn, he stopped swearing and abusing Sarah and just stared at her, stunned. "Eve, you can't be here, you're dead!"

She gave him a grim smile "How does it feel to be always wrong Daniel? And how many times do I have to tell you that I HATE being called 'Eve', I always have?"

"We don't have much time, so shut up and listen you bastard! You really are a piece of work Ankles, you coerced me into becoming an agent to further your career, then you KNOWINGLY sent me in there to be passed around by all of those sick bastards as a fuck toy, to be used and abused any way they wanted. Do you know why they knew what I was there for and abused me the way they did, you sick fuck? Because you TOLD Shaka that I had infiltrated the Ring, and Shaka told Rasputin, who ordered them to abuse and degrade me to try and keep me from looking into them. But stupid me, I was doing it for the man I loved, who loved me, so I endured all their abuse and got you your intel, and you told Shaka, who told Rasputin, so I was abused and degraded even more, do you see the cycle here you bastard? THEN, when I find out the names of the two bigwigs who were the connection between the CIA and the Ring, you run straight to fucking Graham and TELL him that I've identified him, so he puts out a kill order on me! The only thing that saved me was that Sarah didn't want to kill me, she only shot me when I went for my gun."

"I don't hold what she did against Sarah, she was only doing her job like we all do, but you, you bastard, YOU sent me in there, knowing exactly what they were going to do to me, not caring what would happen to me as long as I got you the intel to further YOUR career for you before they killed me off! Were you ever faithful to me you pig? I know that you've been chasing women all over the place since you thought you got me killed off, but I'll bet that you started as soon as you sent me into the Ring, didn't you, you sick fuck? DIDN'T YOU?"

Lynn had been putting bullets into Shaw to emphasise her points, but she'd kept pulling the trigger without anything happening, so Sarah swapped the empty VAL in her hands for one with a full magazine, putting a charged magazine into the one she took off her when she had it. She noted that, for all of Lynn's rage, she was placing her shots carefully to inflict pain without killing him too quickly, except for the multiple shots to the groin, he'd bleed out from them fairly quickly.

Ten minutes later, they were just about done mopping up the rest of the Ring agents in the building (there had been over a hundred of them in there) when Dasha let them know that Anna had called to say that the cops were getting close (Dasha was in front of the hole where the front doors used to be, so she could get a signal while no-one else could). That was enough to convince them to quickly finish off the opposition and exit the building, activating the Armageddon devices as they did so to wipe out any systems and recordings and fry whatever was left.

Carina and Zondra had made an interesting sight as they ran out of the building, stripping off the armour and battledress so they could change back into the casual clothes they'd been wearing before (as an open top Lamborghini, wearing battledress and edgy cops wouldn't be a good mix). They threw the battledress and main weapons into the boot of the Mustang and jumped into the Lambo, still trying to do themselves up as they took off. They all got the hell away from there, with Carina and Zondra in Carina's Lamborghini and Chuck and Sarah in the Mustang convertible (with the top and windows up to avoid the battledress they were wearing attracting too much interest), while Lynn and the rest were in the minivans.

All four vehicles took off in different directions, and none of them ran into the cops. Back at El Castillo, the four women all got 'talkings to' for taking stupid risks like that, but everyone understood why Lynn had to get closure with her ex husband, Sarah had to make good for the woman she almost killed, and Carina's nightmares about similar scenarios to what Lynn had had to endure drove her to support Lynn in killing her demons. Zondra had mainly been there to watch the others' backs.

 **A/N: Ifn ya don't know what 'Ankles' means, I ain't gunna tell ya! ;^)**


	17. Mandouche

**Sorry, got myself lost in the nineteenth century again, took a left in 1860 and got sidetracked. I think I'm finding my way back though, I can see 1890 up ahead of me now ;^)**

 **NB: If anyone's confused by the note above, I'm back to writing more steampunk.**

 **Usual disclaimers, no rights to any characters portrayed, this isn't the real world and it's not a Disney Princess story.**

Pasadena – September 2009

Working with Lynn, they started making serious inroads on the Ring, because she was the one who had uncovered and knew all the information that her ex-husband had been trying to build his fame and fortune on. Whatever information she gave to him had disappeared without anything being done about it back then, so the war on the Ring was progressing faster than it had ever had before.

Most of the agencies that they were dealing with were under the impression that they were getting incredible results from the search engines that they'd created to dig out intel on the Ring, and they didn't feel any need to correct their misapprehensions, as Lynn was safer, and happier, if no-one knew anything about her. As well as working on the Ring intel, Lynn was settling well into her Shadow Security cover job, and she was working quite a bit with Emma in Fox Information Consultants as well, as she was a damned good analyst.

Her private life was also better than it been since before she met Daniel Shaw just out of university, so she was finally getting the life that she deserved. Being in a group that accepted her and Sydney without question or comment, other than saying that it was about time that they were both happy, was a new and wonderful experience for her. Lynn had been confused by this at first, but Emma explained how Anna and Jill had been a part of their lives for eight years until Jill left, with Chuck pretending to be either Anna or Jill's boyfriend through that period to act as a smokescreen for them, and reminded her about the fact thar Anna was with Dasha now, so the family had been fine with any consensual relationships for a long time.

* * *

One of the things that came out of Lynn's intel was that they discovered that the Ring was searching for someone, a drop out from MIT by the name of Manoosh Depak. They couldn't dig up much on Depak, other than the fact that he had a seriously overblown ego, and had left MIT when he didn't get the accolades that he believed his brilliance was due.

The people they talked to conceded that he'd had some good ideas, some might have even been great with a bit of work, but he wasn't the incomparable genius that he thought he was, not by a long shot, and the students and faculty had soon enough had it with his attitude. When Chuck was at MIT not too long ago, people had been pretty easy going as a rule, so the fact that Depak had been generally known as Mandouche, and they made it clear that the nickname hadn't been given to him good naturedly said a lot about the guy (not that any of them could think of a way to put a good spin on a name like that anyway).

They tracked this Mandouche to Los Angeles and mapped out his habits, which were so predictable that they couldn't work out how the Ring hadn't caught him yet. The easiest in seemed to be the Mexican bar/restaurant that he went to every couple of days at least, to get the nacho sampler and irritate everyone by going on, and on, and on about how no-one could understand what he did because they didn't have his genius.

The others had fun pointing out the fact that Chuck would have to be the one to engage him because they didn't have the technology qualifications to pull it off, whereas he had his degrees from MIT, Caltech and Stanford. Chuck was the most miffed with Sarah, because she was laughing about this more than anyone, but when she realised that he was genuinely upset with her, she pulled his chair around and straddled him so that she was looking him in the eye from just a few inches away. "Chuck, I'm not laughing at YOU, I'm laughing at the situation! You know how often we, Carina, Zondra, Dasha or I, have to engage some sleazebag because the only way to get close to the bastard is to give the pervert the idea that he's going to get what he wants, and how far we often have to go to do that. This time though, the only one who has what it takes to get close to this douche is you, my darling husband, so yeah, I think that that's hilarious, and a relief, OK?"

He conceded her point at that and kissed her, muttering "Just as long as you don't expect me to let him got that far!" She swatted him for that and sent him off to get ready for his 'date', reminding him to dress nerdy.

They took over control of the Mexican bar and Chuck got in place when they had word that Mandouche was going through his usual rituals before he went to get his nachos on. As soon as he arrived, Chuck could see that the people they talked to at MIT were right, whether it was delusions of grandeur or just small man's syndrome, the little douche was RUDE! He just pushed past anyone in his way and kept shouting that he wanted a nacho sampler while Javier, who was behind the bar, was talking to another customer.

Chuck was having a hard time not laughing out loud when he heard Anna, Zondra, Casey, Mei Ling and Vinnie, who were out in the control van, begging to be allowed to shoot the douche, as that would still stop the Ring getting their hands on him. Chuck was careful to keep a straight face as he muttered into his mic "No, you can't! And neither can you Javi! What you CAN do though is ruin his day by giving your lines about how I got the last one and they don't have what they need to make any more." All he got back was a 'click' over the radio to confirm that Javier had heard him, and Javier made a point of unhurriedly finishing with his other customers before he turned to Mandouche.

As soon as Javier told Depak that Chuck had the last nacho sampler, he turned to him and interrupted him to try and buy it off him, pretty much demanding that he sell it to him because he only came here for this. Like Javier, Chuck's natural reaction to the way the little douche rudely interrupted him when he was to all intents and purposes engrossed in the book he was reading would have been to just tell him to fuck off, but they had to find out why the Ring was after him (though they were quickly coming to understand why someone would want to kill the little tool) so he played the game, telling him. "Sorry man, no can do, I've been missing Mejico so I came down from Glendale to get myself a taste, but here (pushing it over a little), you can share mine if you like."

They started talking over the Nacho sampler (most of which Mandouche was hoovering down), initially with Depak going on about the fact that this was the only place that made the Nacho sampler authentically (Chuck had to bite his tongue to stop himself from asking how someone who's accent said that he was born and raised in Mumbai and had only been here for a few years was qualified to rate the authenticity of Mexican food, or pointing out that a nacho sampler was hardly an authentic dish anyway, seeing as it was an American creation), but they branched out from there, because the book Chuck had been reading caught his eye and they started talking about that, and their degrees (he was miffed to find that Chuck had actually finished his degree at MIT, and had his degrees in both Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Stanford as well, so he would have been worse if Chuck had mentioned any of his postgrad degrees from Caltech) and then they got into what they'd been doing since they left university.

When Chuck told him about the businesses he'd created and was running, Mandouche's ego made him tell him about this ground breaking technology he'd developed for some organisation. He didn't go into any great detail, but what he did was enough to set off alarm bells, as it was sounding like Intersect technology. As the nachos wouldn't last the way that the tool was hoeing into them, Chuck had started buying beers to get him to settle in and talk.

At that point Chuck was interrupted by Anna calling from the van to tell him that they'd spotted teams of Ring agents heading towards the bar. Chuck tried to talk the douche into continuing their conversation somewhere else, but he was a lightweight and a few beers had already made him comfortably numb, so he just wanted to stay in the bar and talk there. When it was obvious how this was going, Zondra spat out "Fuck! It wasn't supposed to go this way, hold on Chuck, I'm coming in."

With that she turned to Anna and told her she needed her clothes, because she needed something to cause a distraction and what Anna was wearing was the only thing that fit the bill. Luckily Anna was good at getting her gear off quickly, so Zondra turned up at the door inside three minutes. Zondra attracted more than a few looks when she walked in the door (tall and beautiful will do that), but when she took off her coat to show off the "FRAK OFF" cropped T and miniskirt she was wearing (being Anna's, and small on her, they hardly covered her and the T-Shirt was rather strained), she had just about every eye on her. Mandouche's eyes struggled with which to focus on, her long, toned legs (which looked all the longer with her heels and that tiny miniskirt), or her chest, which was straining the bounds of the T-shirt.

His distraction (along with everyone else's) made it a simple matter for Chuck to stick him in the neck with a tranq dart and then hoist him up out of the chair as he greeted Zondra with a kiss. They were about to head out the front door, making it look like Chuck had been waiting for Zondra and he was helping his drunk friend, but Anna called again to warn them that the Ring agents had almost reached that door, so they headed out the back instead and the van met them there as they exited, so they were away safely before the Ring could check out the back for Depak.

They got him back to the Dungeon and unfortunately for Zondra, the fact that she was the last thing he saw before he went under meant that she had to be the one to work him. While she was doing that, Chuck went through everything in Mandouche's bag and found what he was looking for when he discovered the circuitry and flash storage mounted in a pair of sunglasses. He also found one of those specialised Ring phones, so he knew what the Ring had been coming after him at the Mexican bar for, they wanted to retrieve their property.

Zondra didn't mind in the least when the door suddenly opened and Chuck and Casey walked in, but Depak did, because he was sure that he was just about to get lucky with this beautiful woman, as she was already down to her lacy lingerie and hadn't slapped him down like every other woman did if he tried it on with her. Chuck walked over to pick up a silk robe and bring it back for Zondra, while Casey grabbed Mandouche by the arm and hauled him off the bed.

After Chuck had helped her into her robe, Zondra decided to wind up that disgusting little pig who'd been all over her whenever he was conscious, so she turned around and stepped up to wrap her arms around Chuck's neck so that she could give him a long, passionate, kiss, rubbing herself all over him. The show she put on had the desired effect on Depak, as he looked broken as Casey dragged him from the room.

When Chuck and Zondra came out of the room behind them (with Zondra tying her robe), Sarah called out laughingly "OK, I'll let you have that one Zee, but that's the one and only get out of jail free card you get with my husband!", Zondra grinned back at her, but waited until Depak was in the interrogation room to say. "Yeah, sorry about that, but I had to get back at that disgusting little douche, and Chuck was the best way to do it." Anna also called out "You owe me a new T-shirt after you stretched mine like that! It'll never fit me again now!" and Zondra grinned at her, too as she nodded.

In the interview room, Chuck nodded to Casey to leave, and once he had, closing the door behind him, Chuck tossed the sunglasses on the table in front of Depak. "Tell me about these." Depak glared up at him, angry about the way the woman that he thought he was about to get lucky with had just latched onto this guy right in front of him, rubbing his face in the fact that she wouldn't have touched him unless she was ordered to.

He picked up the glasses and an idea formed in his brain, so he smirked as he said "Why don't I show you instead?" as he put them on, and then attacked him. He wasn't more than twenty seconds into his attack before he realised that this wasn't going at all the way it was supposed to. This nerd was somehow easily avoiding every blow or kick he threw at him, and to take matters worse, he wasn't even bothering to fight back, he was just taunting him by slapping him from time to time.

Chuck let the 'fight' go on for about a minute while he analysed the moves that Depak was making. Once he'd confirmed that all the moves he was making were from the Fulcrum Intersect database, he snatched the glasses off Depak's face and gave him one, final, slap across the face that was hard enough to bring him to his knees.

Casey came back into the room at that point and lifted Depak off the floor, depositing him back in the chair. Chuck handed the glasses to Casey and nodded to the door again. When the door closed again he asked. "Who commissioned you to build those glasses?" Depak just told him to fuck off, so he grabbed his neck, digging into the nerve point that sent waves of excruciating pain shooting through his body.

Depak screamed and Chuck repeated his question "I don't know, I don't know, they never said, they came to me when I was back at MIT and told me that if I built what they wanted, they'd pay me fifteen million, I'd have enough money to have anything I wanted, women, cars, anything. Wait, no, one of them did say something about a ring I think?"

"Where did you get the code that's in the glasses?"

"They gave it to me, along with the glasses and everything else, I just stripped it down to a bare shell that was hard coded to run these routines in real time, that was the only way to get the code down to the size that could be loaded into the glasses."

"Why were they coming after you?"

"When I realised how much what I'd made for them was really worth, I tried to renegotiate, but they just said I was getting the fifteen million and that was it. I wasn't going to accept less than I deserved, so I took my work and ran. If I can get my creation to Weap-Con I'll be a god, I could easily get ten, twenty times or more than what the measly fifteen million that Ring was going to pay me!" He looked calculatingly at Chuck, "If you let me go Chuck, I'll cut you in for a share, we can both be rich!"

Chuck looked at him disgust and then turned to the mirror behind him and waved Casey in again. As Casey was taking Depak out, Chuck stopped him. "Oh, by the way Mandouche? You didn't 'create' anything, you just repackaged what you'd been supplied with, including the idea, so in fact you were being paid an incredible amount for a relatively straight forward coding job. If your overblown ego and greed hadn't made you try to get even more, when you were already being paid far more than you deserved, this might have been in the Ring's hands without being discovered, so thanks for that at least." He nodded to Casey, and when he took Mandouche to a holding cell (after 'accidentally' shoving his face into the door jam), Chuck went to the conference room and brought up the link for Auntie Di.

Like Zondra, he just felt unclean and wanted a shower after dealing with something as loathsome as Depak, so he just went over the facts. The Ring had at least parts of Fulcrum's Intersect technology and code, and they'd engaged Depak to re-engineer the martial arts portion of the Fulcrum Intersect (and presumably other parts of the Intersect) into a form that could be loaded into a pair of Intersect update glasses and input the signals in real time into the wearer. This was for the purpose of utilising parts of the Intersect without having to load the Intersect into the brain of the subject and almost certainly making them braindead.

Considering that the Fulcrum Intersect's track record of burning out the brains of any subjects was even worse than the CIA's had been, this had actually been a clever move on the Ring's part as it may have allowed parts of the Intersect to be used by ordinary people without any appreciable harm.

He went on to explain that he had the glasses that Depak had made, along with all the code and schematics which had been on the drives that he'd had with him, but pointed out how difficult it would be to ensure that the Ring didn't get their hands on Depak again, given that they knew how much the Ring had managed to infiltrate both the CIA and NSA. He also added that, because the Ring had been informed that Depak had supposedly been successful with the task they gave him, they had to be expected to make a serious effort to reacquire him in an attempt to confirm that, and if so get him to repeat what he'd done.

Diane couldn't believe that Chuck, who avoided killing if there was any way at all to avoid it, appeared to be all but insisting that that was what should be done here, so she asked him straight out whether that was what he was saying here. He shook his head, clearly uncomfortable about what he was about to say. If Depak had displayed any redeeming qualities, at all, Chuck wouldn't have been able to go through with this, but he'd made it abundantly clear that he was nothing but an egotistical, self serving little sleaze who didn't give a second thought to what might be done to untold numbers of innocent people with his creation, so that made the path that Chuck had to take to protect others from his greed and ambition quite clear.

"No, what I'm saying is that we need to do is to let the Ring recapture Depak as a burnt out victim of an Intersect upload, to convince them that he lied when he told them that he'd been successful, and that trying to do use the Intersect code in this way will just destroy the subject's brain the same way that an Intersect upload would. Otherwise they'll try to get someone else to do it, and given that we won't have any idea of who or where they are, we're not likely to be able to stop them if they're successful as well. Actually, we don't know that Depak was totally successful, as he seems even worse than the people at MIT described him, but we can't afford to take the chance."

Diane nodded, asking. "What about the guards? He'll have to be guarded, and they're bound to be killed when the Ring takes Depak."

Chuck actually smiled "The guards will already be dead, we'll rig up corpses with remote control exoskeletons and movie effects blood bags etc, so they'll put up a fight and die convincingly. The van will also be under remote control and we'll make it look as though we took the low key approach in an attempt to try and slip him past them."

She shook her head at him, as she didn't think that he could have surprised her more than he already had, but that did it alright. "Can you do that? Well enough to fool them?"

Chuck nodded "For the small window the Ring will have, yeah, we'll send out a call that they're under attack and send in a backup team straight away, so they'll only have just enough time to grab Depak and run."

Diane nodded "That's the best plan I can think of in this scenario, do it!" With that she cut the link, because she couldn't stand looking at Chuck tearing himself apart about what he was going to have to do to that disgusting excuse for a human being.

Chuck and Leslie coded a Fulcrum Intersect upload which included the martial arts portion of the Intersect that Depak had used for his glasses, then they made him upload it via the glasses. Afterwards, he could move, and even try to perform the moves that were loaded, but his mind was gone and he invariably forgot to do what was necessary to remain standing when he tried to do so. Anyone who examined him would confirm that he was irreparably damaged by an Intersect upload, and they wouldn't be able to get any more than a few disjointed words out of him, so he should serve to sell his failure to the Ring quite well.

Meanwhile, the others prepared the remote control exoskeletons and special effects and dressed and equipped the corpses to look like a proper FBI team. Diane sent a C-37 to pick up Depak and the doctored Intersect glasses etc, and everything went off just as Chuck had planned, though the Ring was messier than he'd expected, as they blew the front off the van with an anti tank rocket when the call went out from the van that they were under attack.

The support vans were less than two miles back, so the Ring only just had the time to shoot the guards, grab Depak and the bag that was being delivered with him and take off, though they hit the van with another rocket as they were leaving, presumably in an attempt to ensure that no guards were left alive to prevent their being identified. That implied that they'd bought the act well enough, and everything that happened in and around the van had been recorded anyway, so they knew which turned CIA agents had performed the 'rescue'.

Over the next three weeks, four other computer engineers with similar backgrounds to Depak died in fires or explosions, two more in America and two in Europe. They took this as proof that they'd convinced the Ring that what they were trying with the glasses couldn't work, so they were now cleaning house to ensure that nothing existed to lead back to them, or show what they'd been trying to do.

The CIA agents who 'rescued' Depak were added into the Ring investigation, and watching their movements and contacts proved quite useful in uncovering more of the Ring, as did tracing payments and electronic communications to and from them. While what he'd done to Depak still haunted Chuck, the benefits that they'd accrued from that were beginning to salve his conscience a little.

* * *

Pasadena – October 2009

As well as Lynn joining the fight, they had Stefan Bartkowski, or Stephen Jaworski as he was known again, back with them at full force for the first time in over twenty years, and this Stephen was almost as much of a force to be reckoned with as his children were. While they were confident that the Carmichael Intersect was a complete success, and they were making plans to upload it into Stephen to clean out the faulty early version that was doing so much damage to him, Sarah had noticed that the scars that covered Chuck's body were fading, so she and Ellie made him submit to a rigorous battery of physical and neurological tests.

The results of these tests were amazing, as they showed that the damage that his body and internals had been accumulating all his life was being repaired, and this wasn't just physical, it was neurological as well. When Ellie went back through the tests that she'd been doing on Chuck at least once a week since he loaded the CI, she saw the small changes that had been occurring from as early as week one, but they'd often been so small that she hadn't noted them when she'd been checking the results. Cumulatively, Chuck's body had repaired nearly all the damage that had been done to it, and it was showing increased capacity and better efficiency and flexibility in nearly all areas, and this process was still on-going.

One thing that had shown up in Chuck's earlier brain scans was the areas of damage that had been caused by the earlier three versions of the Intersect and numerous Intersect revisions that had been loaded into him, but those areas of damage were now pretty much all gone, and the brain scans were also showing increases in the number and capacity of the pathways in his brain for memory and cognitive functions. The only thing that Ellie could think of to explain this was that when they moved the physical activity interfaces of the CI down into the areas of the natural brain/body interfaces, they may have managed to trigger the body's core healing processes, the ones that the conscious mind tended to circumvent.

Whatever the reason, they all accepted that this was a damned good thing, but the question remained as to whether this would work for others, or was it just a miracle cure for Chuck? While Chuck and Ellie were debating this, Mary told them to test it on her. They tried to convince her that it was too much of a risk, that their father was already damaged and the CI could only improve his lot in life, even if it were a limited time thing, but she was adamant, she still loved Stephen just as much as she ever had, with all of his faults and the problems that he'd caused, so she was determined that they weren't going to experiment on their father, she'd be his guinea pig.

When they couldn't dissuade her, Ellie put her though the same batteries of tests that she'd put Chuck through, and she cried to see how much damage her mother had accumulated in over fifty five years, as she'd been shot, injured and tortured innumerable times, and the drastic drug treatments and electric shock that they'd used in interrogations had caused more damage to her brain than the Intersects had to Chuck.

Ellie also saw that more than a little of that damage had been more recent, so she asked her what had been done to her when she went into Volkoff's world to try to recover Hartley Winterbottom. Mary admitted that she'd been drugged, tortured or whatever any time that Volkoff had doubts about her over that eighteen months plus that she was there, and with his lieutenants always questioning her loyalties, that happened quite often. They cried together over that, and then Ellie loaded the CI into her.

Over the next month, Ellie ran various tests on her mother daily, determined not to drop the ball like she had with Chuck. They saw that Mary's food intake and sleep requirements went up as Chuck's had at the start, but this time they were seeing why, because they were monitoring the progress of her body repairing itself. The damaged areas of her brain were reducing and the pathways expanding, and as they were monitoring the process, they could gauge the effects of this, as Mary reported that she was remembering more, thinking more clearly, coming up with answers more quickly and making connections between divergent but related pieces of information much more easily. By the end of the month, Mary agreed that she was comfortable that the CI would be safe for her father, and they brought him back to put him through the same batteries of tests and load the CI into him.

When Stephen started showing improvement almost immediately as he switched from degenerating to healing, the others wanted to know what was going on, and when Leslie saw how the damaged areas of the brain were being repaired, he wanted in, as Ellie's tests had shown him just how much damage the drugs that the CIA had used to keep him controllable for sixteen years had done to him. Carina wanted to go through this with him, and Sarah and Zondra wanted to got forward with it as well.

Before Chuck and Ellie were prepared to go forward with the women though, they made arrangements for Dr Dreyfus to move out to Los Angeles and basically be their dedicated, semi-retired, therapist. The reason for this was that, while Chuck and Stephen had problems dealing with the memories that the CI unlocked, Mary had had far more, because dealing with the type of things that women had to, especially in the spy business, was often rather more traumatic than the death and mayhem that was often involved. That had been hard for Mary, and as the Frost Queen, she'd had to face those elements less than most women agents did.

Dr Dreyfus didn't take much to be talked around, and after he wound up his practice, he moved to L.A. and took up one of the smaller apartments in the Castle. Once he'd settled in, they moved forward with the women's CI loads, which by now had expanded to include Ellie, Emma, Anna, Dasha and most of the women in Shadow Security, most of the men had already gone forward with it.

* * *

It was Mary who put together the missing link in what had been bothering Chuck ever since he heard about Rasputin, once she had more of her memories back. Rasputin, Russian, the Mad Monk, all the Ring connections in the old Eastern Bloc countries, the political and economic resources that the Ring had, and Roark and Zarnow running to Volkoff for asylum, the only thing that made any sense was that Volkoff was Rasputin.

His ties with Graham also made more sense if Rasputin were Volkoff, as Graham would have known what buttons to push to gain Volkoff's confidence after Mary was out of the way, given that he knew what went on in Volkoff's mind from the documentation on the Agent X profile. Graham was probably behind Roark's connection with Volkoff too, for that matter, as Roark had always been one of Graham's minions and when they looked through his records they'd found evidence that he'd been dealing with Fulcrum up to 2007, but they'd had a falling out after Graham found out about Fulcrum trying to get their hands on his Intersect project through Larkin. It was quite likely that he'd been trying to use Fulcrum and the Ring to expand his power base, if he hadn't been behind the two organisations' creation himself.

Chuck kicked himself when Mary brought that up, as it was so obvious then. Knowing who they were up against was an advantage, but knowing that they were up against someone as powerful and crazy as Alexei Volkoff was rather daunting.

When he mentioned that, Mary brought up something else, "You know that I've kept my connections with the people who control the Spetsnaz Otriad that makes up the core of all Volkoff's security forces?" Chuck nodded "The rest of Volkoff's security forces are no more than glorified security guards. These people are the ones who have supplied the weapons, ammunition and equipment that make up our armouries. I know for a fact that you and Casey are both known and respected by many of the Spetsnaz troops because many of them had been on operations with the two of you. Marco, Gertrude and over half of the ones in Shadow Security are also known and respected by many of the Spetsnaz troops."

"The Otriad is based on Volkoff's 'yacht', the Contessa, which is in fact the converted and updated helicopter carrier Moskva, with the four companies rotating to control the security for Volkoff's Moskow headquarters, one at a time. The thing is, the Spetsnaz Otriad takes orders from its commanders, not Volkoff, and their doubts about him have only been increasing as his power and excesses increased. What that means is that it's quite likely that we could come to an arrangement with these men to have the Spetsnaz forces withdraw if we move to take Volkoff Industries down, and if that happened, Volkoff would be crippled."

Chuck looked at her, nodding musingly. "Just about every intelligence agency in the world would jump at the chance to take Volkoff Industries down, so we wouldn't have any trouble getting the resources to do it, but what would happen with the Spetsnaz Otriad after we take down Volkoff?"

Mary grinned at him, and he saw the Frost Queen of yore in that feral grin. "I'd like to keep them on board, man for man they're equal to any force in the world, and I'd put my money on them being more than a match for most forces at least three or four times their size. Being based on the Contessa, they can be moved to wherever they're needed, and the best part is, Volkoff's so paranoid that he's kept everything about the Contessa and the size and location of the Otriad a secret. All most know is that there are at least two Spetsnaz companies, they have no idea how many there are, where they're based or anything about the Contessa at all. So, they can sail off on the Contessa and no-one will know that they ever existed."

Chuck looked around before asking. "What do we need an army like that for though?"

She started counting off points on her fingers. "First, I, and most of our group are ex-KGB sleeper agents, if the American government, or most governments for that matter, find that out we're in trouble, we're talking black sites or a bullet in the back of the head. Second, the Russian government is still trying to get half of us back under its control, if they decide that they aren't getting what they want, they're just as likely to expose them and let the other governments clean up their mess for them. Third, I'm still being hunted as Volkoff's second in command and if I'm caught I'll be looking at a black site or a bullet in the back of the head. And fourth, the only people I really trust not to turn on us at any moment in our government are Di, Roan, plus maybe Jane Bentley and the Director of the FBI, no, I do trust Jane, but I don't really know him well enough to say the same about him."

"If any of these things happen, we're in big trouble, we've got at least thirty people here who can fight, but that's nowhere near enough if the government, any government, turns on us, so I'd feel a lot more secure with a force of well over four hundred of the best Spetsnaz troops behind us. We can set them up cover jobs in the security companies and have them rotating through being on duty like they're doing at Volkoff Industries, but I'd feel a lot better having them."

Chuck nodded, and assured her that he'd look into how they could manage it. At first she'd sounded paranoid, almost as bad as Dad, but her arguments were all valid, and he could see her point now.

 **A/N: Did you like the Zombie guards?**


	18. Ring Of Fire

**Dear Anonymous Coward, thank you for proving my point, FOAD**

 **Sorry about the delay, I've been off, checking out and/or revisiting some of the great early Chuck FFs from the favourites of the people who actually seem to like my stories. So far, the reasoning that if they're crazy enough to like my stories, I'll probably like the other stories they do is proving to be relatively sound. It's just a pity that so many of those stories were left unfinished because the mini mobs of self righteous 'fans' with their torches and pitchforks drove away their writers with their attacks, purely because they weren't writing exactly what THEY wanted to see.**

 **To all of THAT crowd, oh I know that you're still here because I've been stuck with those pitchforks and dropped stories often enough myself, I hope that you're proud of yourselves. You've hounded a great many good writers to the point that they've been driven off and left FF with precious few who are of their calibre. I just wish y'all would go back to your FTA meetings, or better yet, head through the gateways into the 'verses where burning people just because they think differently is good and proper, or perhaps more appropriately, into a Fahrenheit 451 'verse. You'll be happy there, I just know it, there won't be none of that silly open mindedness, tolerance or 'live and let live' guff to worry about there.**

 **OK, rant off,** **I** **just** **realised that I** **didn't follow up on** **one of the plot points** **I left hanging** **a while back, so I've had to make a very small change to Wontons and Weddings and add a bit at the end of Brits, Lies and Videotape** **to patch the hole.**

 **U** **sual disclaimers, no rights to any characters portrayed, this isn't the real world and it's not a Disney Princess story.**

Pasadena – February 2010

When he had the time, Chuck was looking into ways that he could make his mother's idea of bringing the Contessa and its complement on-board workable, unfortunately, time wasn't something that they had a lot of, because between hunting down the Ring and all of their 'real' work, they were very busy. On top of that, the Carmichael Intersect had introduced a complication, one aspect that none of them had considered about the 'miracle cure' part of the CI that had been repairing so much of the damage to their bodies was the fact that any contraceptive measures or damage to the reproductive organs were also being 'repaired'.

The upshot of this was that most of the 'better half' of the group had unexpectedly come to be in the family way. Sarah, Ellie, Carina, Zondra, Mei Ling, Gertrude, Ilsa, Zoe, Alex (Forrest), Vicky and Sofia were all pregnant. The CI's healing process didn't seem to have turned back the body clock for those who had gone into menopause, or not yet anyway, and Anna, Dasha, Sydney and Lynn weren't effected as they didn't have sex with men, but the other women with partners, and Sofia, who was more sex mad than Carina ever had been by nature, were now pregnant.

While they were happy to be starting families, especially Sarah and Chuck, this led to concerns about just how they were going to cover all of the workload that they had in front of them when they were looking at so many of their key people being down for the count. They started selecting others to add to the Shadow Security team to make up for the shortfall that they expected as the pregnancies progressed. Sarah could also see the underlying panic in Chuck when he thought about the fact that both she and their baby would be at risk if anything happened to her while she was pregnant.

* * *

In the middle of this, they had another scenario where they were being set up by the Ring. Casey was contacted by Colonel Keller, the one who had coerced him into staging his death back in eighty nine and took the phone off him to prevent Kathleen telling him that she was pregnant. Keller told him when and where to meet him, adding that if he didn't see him, bad things would happen to people that he cared about, leaving the threat vague. Given that John had the CI now, the flash that he had gave him chapter and verse on Colonel James Keller, including his dishonourable discharge back in the nineties and his suspected level of involvement with the Ring, so while he wanted to tell the bastard where to shove his demands, he played along, agreeing to meet him at the appointed place and time.

Knowing that he'd be followed after he met with Keller, they organised for someone to get one of the Echo Park apartments ready for him. No-one was surprised when Yuri and Rob offered to do that and provide support from Ellie's old apartment, because for all the fact that Yuri's size and expression could terrify most anybody if he tried and he was a force of nature when he had to be, he was really a gentle giant who was always eager to help.

Rob would always put his hand up too when Yuri did, because he was Yuri's partner. Most of the girls, especially the ones who were in relationships (with either sex) liked pairing up with Yuri or Rob on operations if they couldn't work with their own partners, because for all the fact that all of their guys were gentlemen, it was just more comfortable when there was no issue of attraction involved, and the boys were just big teddy bears.

Casey met with Keller as agreed at 1900, and Keller tried to make it a friendly chat, but Casey just cut to the chase. "Colonel, you haven't asked me to see you after twenty odd years just to chat about old times, what do you want from me?"

Keller was pissed off that Casey took the wind out of his sails, but he just went with it. "In the morning, your team will be allocated a trace cell mission for the CIA Secure Archives in D.C. and we need you to collect something for us."

"Who's we, Colonel?"

"The people I work for John, you don't need to know any more than that."

"Actually, I do Colonel." Keller threw a folder onto the table in front of him "No. Actually, you don't."

Casey looked inside the folder and saw pictures of Kathleen, the fiancé that he'd left behind, and some that showed her with Alex, they all appeared to have been taken in the last year. The threat was clear and as much as he wanted to kill the bastard for threatening his ex and his daughter, he forced himself to look indifferent as he said. "So? Yeah, she was my fiancé twenty one years ago, but she's obviously moved on, because that looks like that's her daughter with her."

Keller smirked at him "Keep looking John."

Casey looked under the photos, and there was the birth certificate for Alexandra Johanna McHugh, born in August 1989, showing Alexander John Coburn as the father, just as Chuck had shown him back when she was nine.

Keller smirked at him again as he smugly said "That's why you're going what I tell you to, no questions asked John, because we can get to your daughter and her mother any time we want, and I'm sure you don't want to lose them again just after you've found them."

Casey REALLY wanted to kill the bastard now, but he couldn't do anything until they had Alex, Kathleen and her husband moved to a safe location.

"What do you want me to get?"

"If you keep pushing me by asking questions, John, we may have some fun with them just to teach you a lesson, Kathleen is still quite a looker, and so is your daughter."

"If you or any of your men lay one finger on either of them Keller, I'll tear you limb, from limb, from limb! How am I supposed to know what to take to bring it out if I have no idea what it is? Do I need a trolley, a bio containment cylinder, a lead lined box, what?"

"Relax, you can put it in your pocket, here." Keller threw a digital key on the table. "That's the key for the box. I expect to hear from you as soon as you return with what you've been sent for Major!"

With that he told Casey to get out.

* * *

Casey made as much effort as would be expected to shake his tails on the way back to Echo Park, but made sure that he didn't actually shake them, as the casual scene at the poker table was something that they wanted the Ring to see. About fifteen minutes after he got to 'his' apartment, Rob went over and asked if he was still on for the poker game. His response was the equivalent of 'Hell Yeah!'

In Ellie's old apartment, Yuri, Mike and Zoe were already seated at the table, and they dealt the cards as soon as Casey and Rob sat in. No sound could escape the apartment, and the light had been set to illuminate only the surface of the table, so any watchers outside wouldn't be able to lip read easily. The big screen up on the wall where it couldn't be seen from outside was split to show Diane and the team sitting in the Dungeon, and as soon as they'd started playing, Casey outlined what Keller had told him.

As soon as Casey mentioned the pictures of Kathleen and Alex, Anna jumped up to go and send drones off to Kathleen's house, to see whether they were currently being watched. Mei Ling also went off to see who they had who were the closest matches to Kathleen, her husband and Alex, while Chuck got into the CIA's systems (it wasn't accurate to say that he hacked in, as he still maintained back doors that gave him access any time they needed to get in) to find out just what it was that they were trying to blackmail Casey into stealing.

Not surprisingly, Chuck had his answer first, and he went on to find out just what Laudenol was and what it was meant to do. What he found worried him, because he didn't want to think about what the Ring wanted an experimental battlefield drug that turned off all emotions and pain for.

Knowing what the drug was supposed to do, there was no way that they were going to hand it over to the Ring, so Chuck and Ellie sat down to go through the frighteningly comprehensive database for drugs and poisons that had been included in the Fulcrum Intersect's database. Between them, it only took about half an hour to come up with a cocktail that would effectively simulate the effects for about an hour, but would make the subject useless for a while after that.

While they were doing that, Diane came back with confirmation that the DNI had just privately advised her that the Ring had gotten its bought politicians who'd been planted on the oversight committees to insist that it had to be the Intersect Team do the trace cell mission, and the official notification would come through in the morning. So they had the mission tomorrow as Keller told Casey they would, and the Ring was obviously confident that Casey would get the drug out of the Secure Archives, whereas no-one would be able to get it past all the scanners that would be active if they had to go through the normal processes.

With Chuck and Ellie's solution, what Casey would leave the archives with was a fake drug that would do nothing more than simulate the effects for an hour, while the real Laudenol would be locked away in the box that Diane was being allocated for the test. The team was quite capable of the requisite sleight of hand that would ensure that any active cameras in the Secure Archives didn't pick up the shuffle they were doing.

There were two big problems with the situation, the first was that they had to protect Alex, Kathleen and her husband from Keller and the Ring. The other was that they had no idea about what the Ring's ultimate goal was here. The fact that they wanted the Laudenol for some nefarious purposes was obvious, but they'd exposed some of their heavy hitters and used what leverage they thought they had over Casey to ensure that it was the Intersect team who stole the Laudenol, so they were obviously coming after the team. The question was why were they investing this much into trying to bring the Intersect team down?

Casey wasn't at all happy when Alex announced that, while Mei Ling and Javier were close enough matches to Mom and Roger's size and build to pull off replacing them when they finished being made up, she would have to go in with them because they didn't have anyone remotely close to her size who was free to stand in for her. The argument over that was another one that Casey had no hope of winning, he knew that she was right but he couldn't stand the thought of his little girl being in danger like that. Alex shut it down by talking directly to him over the video link.

"Dad, I know you're worried, but I'll be OK, Mei, Javi and the others won't let anything happen to me. You know as well as I do that we don't have anyone else to do this, Anna is the only one close to my size and you need her working on the main operation."

He nodded and responded just as quietly. "Yeah, but that doesn't make it any easier!"

She told him she loved him and went off to get ready when Mei Ling came in as a convincing Kathleen look-alike. Mei Ling addressed him then. "John, you know that I won't let anything happen to Alex. Have you forgotten the debt I owe you all for helping me save Li Wei?"

Casey shook his head with a tear in his eye as she told him who the other half dozen who would be going in with them were. She also pointed out that thanks to him, Alex was no slouch at this herself, so they'd have nine competent operatives on-site to handle whoever Keller sent, and they'd also have a strike team no more than fifteen minutes out if they needed any backup.

Anna came in to say that there was no sign of any watchers, so they were clear to go in. She'd called Kathleen to explain the situation and they'd stay inside with the place locked up until the team arrived. With that, the team took off while they had the clear window. They'd stay under lock down at the house until this was all done, with only Javier leaving to maintain the pretence that Roger was going off to work. When Kathleen and Roger were brought in, they were set up in one of the guest rooms in the Keep, so they wouldn't have to stay down in the Dungeon for a few days.

* * *

The call for the trace cell mission came in in the morning as expected and the core team flew to D.C. to complete it that night. Everything went as planned, Casey furtively got the Laudenol from the box it was in, then handed it off to Sarah when she handed him the note that was in their 'target' box, she locked the actual Laudenol away in the box without anyone seeing and they got out of there.

When Casey went to hand the 'Laudenol' off to Keller, Chuck and Dasha rode the last leg to the rendezvous strapped to the bottom of his SUV, while Sarah, Carina and Zondra were under a cover in the back. As expected, Keller had a force of over thirty men there, as they were expecting some sort of attack, but they relaxed when Casey turned up apparently alone and went in to talk to Keller.

Chuck and Dasha gave them time to settle down, then released themselves and started taking out the ones on that side of the cabin with their AS VALs. As soon as everyone who could see the SUV was down, Chuck gave the all clear and Sarah, Carina and Zondra jumped out to join the fun. In less than a minute, all of Keller's men were down without getting a shot off or raising an alarm.

After they'd taken out all of Keller's men, Chuck, Sarah and the others were discussing the fear that Keller's threats against Alex had invoked in them, because the idea that bastards like this might come after their children in the future terrified them. The fact that Sarah was the one that noticed that something was happening in the cabin first showed how just much this was effecting Chuck.

"Chuck, there's movement inside."

Chuck faced the cabin just before the front door was wrenched open, and he looked a very worried looking Keller in the eye as Casey said something behind him.

* * *

Inside the cabin, Keller was pissed off, because this was the second time that a discussion with John Casey hadn't gone the way he'd wanted. He was waiting on word from his men that they had acquired the ex-fiancé and the daughter. With that he could make Casey an offer he couldn't refuse, join us or we'll take turns with your daughter and ex-fiancé until they're finished, but the call hadn't come for some reason, so he was trying to stall for time, and Casey had never been much of a one for talking.

Eventually, Casey snorted and said "Stop looking at your phone Keller, your men at Kathleen's house will all be dead or captured by now."

Keller froze, but Casey went on. "I know what you are Keller, and the people I work for got Kathleen and Alexandra out last night."

When Keller went to say something, Casey shook his head with a grim smile "No, the two women that your men were watching were two of the agents that we put in the house to wait for your men."

Keller ran for the door and threw it open to call for his men, only to see that all those in sight were down, and another man was standing there with four women, looking at him. Casey spoke up from behind him. "Now that's my boss, and he wants a word with you."

Keller looked into the eyes of the tall man outside, and knew that he was in serious trouble as the man headed towards the cabin.

* * *

Chuck nodded to Casey and Casey grabbed Keller by the shoulder, dragging him back into the cabin. As they went inside, Chuck asked Sarah to find some rope or something as Casey swept everything off the table. She found some cord, and Casey hoisted Keller up onto the table to tie him down.

Casey convinced Chuck and Sarah to leave the cabin while he made Keller talk. Keller was one of the most senior members of the Ring's American operation, because he'd been one of the original core group recruited to build the North American part of the organisation after his dishonourable discharge back in the '90s. They couldn't afford not to get what was in his head, as it would help them make an impact against the Ring, so Casey had to make sure that Keller wasn't allowed to die before he gave up everything that he knew. That wasn't going to stop him making Keller pay for what he had planned for Alex, or Kathleen though.

While Casey started on Keller, Chuck and Sarah went out to help the others move the bodies of his men into the shed, so that the animals wouldn't get to them before the cleaner crews were brought in. They went over the bodies and removed all weapons, devices, identification, anything that they had on them that may be of use, before they threw the bodies in the shed, tossing everything they took off them into the back of Casey's SUV. When they were done, they went back inside.

After about two and a half hours, Casey stepped back and looked at the others. Keller was giving up what he knew, that wasn't the problem, the problem was that in that time, they'd barely scratched the surface, this bastard was a gold mine.

When he looked at them, Casey said, "We're going to have to take him back, this will take days, maybe even weeks."

Chuck nodded grimly, and stepping up to Keller, stuck a tranq dart into his carotid artery. They untied him from the table, secured his hands and feet and put him in the back of the SUV, tying his hands up high enough that he couldn't reach anything. Then all of them went through the cabin to make sure that they didn't leave anything of use behind.

* * *

Mary, as their best 'interrogator', was putting Keller through at least one or two interrogation sessions a day, but after two weeks the end still wasn't anywhere near in sight, because as they had determined out at the cabin that night, he was a gold mine of intel on the Ring and other nefarious activities.

It eventually took nearly a month to get everything that they thought that they were going to get out of Keller, and then they let Casey do what he'd been desperately wanting to do ever since he'd found out Keller's plans for Alex, process him appropriately.

As Mary had been extracting what Keller knew, the others had been following up on the leads he supplied. They had two advantages here, the first was that the Ring had obviously presumed that Keller had been killed along with all his men (because none of them had ever turned up in any NSA black sites, and there was no hope of identifying any bodies that the cleaners processed), and they hadn't bothered clearing out the facilities and groups that Keller knew about. That meant that the team had a lot of live leads to follow up, and they were making quite a bit of headway.

The second was that Keller had been keeping his knowledge of Kathleen and Alex to himself as his ace in the hole with the Ring, and he'd never shared it with anyone. That meant that, with him and all of his men dead, it was safe for Kathleen and Roger to go home, though Alex moved in with her father and Ellie. This was partly to prevent him worrying so much about her, but also because her life was with the Carmichael 'family' now, so living on-site made more sense. She still went to visit her mother often, she just wasn't living with her any more.

The week after they finished with Keller, even though they hadn't managed to track down any serious intel on what the Ring was planning themselves, they found out from the Ring what they were up to. The Intersect team was called back to D.C. for what was supposedly the after action briefing on the trace cell mission for the CIA's Secure Archives. What their purpose seemed to be though, was to stop the team from interrupting the Ring's plans at what was apparently critical juncture. The Ring had scraped together enough of their heavy hitters, senators on oversight committees, a few three and four star Generals and senior agency people, to make up over two thirds of the 'committee', to ensure that they ruled, under the direction of the four star General Merriweather, over a kangaroo court in order to make sure that it to handed down the findings they needed to get the entire team out of their way.

The Ring had played their cards well with this, as they actually caught them out when they arranged for Chuck, Sarah, Casey, Carina, Zondra and Dasha to come to a given room for the Secure Archives Trace Cell after action briefing. When they entered the room though, it was in fact set up as a court room, and they were held at gunpoint as they were disarmed and relieved of their phones.

At the same time, an military escort burst into Diane's office and took her straight from there to the 'court room' without any chance for her to contact anyone. This was apparently an attempt to do an end run around the DNI, and therefore the President, to disappear the team (including Diane), before anyone could do anything about it.

What the Ring didn't realise, of course, was that Diane's Aide De-camp was on the line to the DNI's private line as soon as they were out of the office. Or that Mary, Marco, Gertrude, Mike, Zoe, Mei Ling, Vinnie, Yuri, Rob, Rick, Javier, Sydney, Alex and Vicky were in town with their support team to back them up for that matter. Ellie, Emma, Lynn, Anna, Jeff, Leslie, Stephen and the rest of the tech team were also there to follow the trails and determine what was going on. As soon as Diane's Aide De-camp called the DNI, he called Ellie, and the tech team leapt into action to try and locate them. (They had been immediately been suspicious when the known team had been called to D.C. for a briefing, so everything had been set up to handle what may happen.)

Inside the 'court room', the proceedings were going as expected for a kangaroo court, they were given no opportunities to present any evidence to refute any of the charges against them or answer any questions properly. The Ring also trotted out Kieran Ryker as the special agent who'd supposedly been investigating the group for years now to unsettle them. Ryker had been Sarah's handler on her later solo missions and thought that he knew how to push her buttons.

Ryker kept hanging around their table trying to goad Sarah about how he'd be dealing with any of her friends who got in his way, but he wasn't making them worried and unsettled, he was giving them something to focus their anger on, so he actually helped them there.

The 'court's first shot was the 'theft' of the Laudenol, as they'd made sure that it had been confirmed to be in the box the afternoon before the trace cell mission, and now it was missing. The team didn't let on that it was still in the Secure Archives, as they wanted to see what the Ring's game was. The DNI and the President knew where it was and the DNI had the key, but there was no sense in giving the game away.

The 'court' kept bringing up the issue of what they'd done to turned agents on missions and numerous other items, such as psychiatric evaluations on them from CIA psychiatrists that none of them had ever seen came up as 'evidence' of how unstable Chuck and the others were, citing their 'unprovoked' attacks on the CIA officials and treatment of prisoners, such as the SIS agent, Barker.

The 'court' also showed footage of what Lynn did to Shaw when she killed him, having doctored the footage to show it as Sarah who'd done it. They had also doctored the footage of the events leading up to it (including how Chuck and the others blew the front doors in while Sarah was already engaging Shaw). The very fact that they had footage from within that Ring building was the final proof that the Ring was doing this, and Chuck kicked himself, as he should have put two and two together the moment he saw Merriweather there. They also presented medical reports and yet more doctored footage to try and show that Chuck, Sarah and Casey had been instrumental in Watterman's death, after they'd had the altercation with him previously.

The fabricated or doctored evidence was laying it on pretty thick that all six of them had been involved in unjustified deaths and attacks in many instances, and they were also accusing Diane of fabricating evidence to cover up their other "killing sprees" and activities to keep her team out of prison while she used them to build her empire for nefarious purposes.

The 'straight' members of the committee who'd been brought in to make up the numbers needed (and who had actually been told was merely an informal hearing of no import) kept asking to see the other evidence that the General and her team were talking about, but were being overruled every time, and they hadn't allowed to stand down and leave once the 'court' proceedings had started.

The outcome of the 'hearing' had been a foregone conclusion from the start, so it was no surprise to see any dissenters from the findings on the committee being overruled, and they were all sent away to be locked up pending sentencing. The problem at that point was that Diane had been taken somewhere separate from the others. This was because the Ring deemed her to be the one who needed to be kept hidden from the DNI and the authorities, as to the Ring, Chuck and the others were a nuisance that was deemed to be no longer a problem once they had them locked up.

* * *

Diane's separation from the others meant that when Anna, Jeff and co engineered a brief power outage just as Chuck and the others were being escorted to their cells, she remained in the CIA's custody. As soon as the lights went out, the team had no trouble overpowering their guards and taking off. They followed the trail of flashing lights that was directing them to their exit point, ducking into rooms that Anna and the others opened or indicated at the times whenever the search parties were getting too close to them.

When they got out of the CIA facility, Mike, Zoe, Mei and Vinnie were waiting in one of their armoured electric vans. As soon as they'd hopped in and the transport was closed up, they just rolled away silently and blended into the traffic, so as far as the CIA could see they'd just disappeared when they left the building.

They went back to a facility they were maintaining via a circuitous route, and the others were waiting for them there. While Casey, Carina, Zondra and Dasha were being reunited with Ellie, Leslie, Vinnie and Anna, Chuck took over the search for Auntie Di, because as good as the others were, this was the Piranha's world. None of them were surprised when Chuck had identified her location and taken control of the security system for the facility to allow them to communicate with her inside of half an hour (the CIA had been the first place he looked).

That was where things turned in their favour, because with Gordon's ego, he hadn't been able to resist going to her cell and boasting to Diane about what they were going to do. What she managed to pass on to them before they saw someone heading for her cell was that she'd actually been the primary target for this operation. While they'd wanted to take Chuck and the team down, at the moment the Ring's priority was just to get them out of the way to prevent them from interfering with their main objective.

What it came down to was that Diane had been selected to chair the Global Intelligence Chiefs' Conference that was coming up in a couple of days in Washington. The whole point was that this Conference would bring most of the heads of the world's intelligence communities together in one room. That was why the Ring had needed to get her out of the way, so that they could replace her with their own man, the Acting DCIA of course, because they had serious plans for that conference.

As they already knew, the Ring had people in positions of power throughout the world's intelligence communities, but their plan for this Conference was to stage a coup that would wipe out any significant figures in the Global Intelligence Community that weren't bought and paid for, by way of a fake terrorist attack at the Conference. Their plan was to then replace the ones they killed with their own minions and through that, get control of the world's intelligence communities. The major side benefit to the Ring in this was how the 'terrorist attack' would discredit the United States in the eyes of the rest of the world, due to prominent figures like that being killed while they were under the protection of the United States. Once they controlled the intelligence communities, they would be able to use them to influence their governments enough to let them do whatever they wanted. The most frightening aspect of their plan was that, unless team Chuck managed to stop them here and now, they would most probably succeed!

Gordon gave up something big as he was taunting Diane though, and she didn't believe he realised just what he'd let slip. Apparently all of the Ring Elders were going to be there at the conference, because they were all highly placed officials in the intelligence agencies of Europe and Eastern Europe. They were also determined to be there to witness their moment of victory over the established order.

* * *

They kept the link open to keep an eye on Diane, in hope that they'd be able to intervene if any moves were made against her, and Chuck slipped out to fill the DNI in on what was happening and get his help to organise the other forces that they would need to stop this. They had their own support teams available to take out the fake terrorists and other forces that the Ring fronted, and he'd already made the plans to organise them and ensure that they'd be here in time before he went to the DNI.

The problem was that they couldn't show their hand, or their faces for that matter, yet, so they needed the DNI to fill in the President and the rest of the good guys. This was necessary to ensure that when this all came down, they'd have the official support needed to prevent the bloodbath which could happen when the legitimate authorities started reacting to the upcoming events.

The DNI also had to be the one to make arrangements for the quiet arrests of the significant Ring figures who'd been outed by the Ring's kangaroo court, Keller's testimony and other things they'd uncovered. These included the National Security Advisor, the Administrator of the DEA, the Deputy Director of the NSA, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and General Merriweather and the others that the Ring had planted on the committee for that kangaroo court. The Acting Director of the Central Intelligence Agency would also be arrested, but he had to wait until after Chuck and the others took him down.

* * *

To deal with the Acting DCIA and the Ring Elders, they would need to be inside that Conference, so they went hunting for suitable delegates to take over the invites from. It didn't take too long for Chuck to identify one female and one male delegate who wouldn't be coming, and were close enough to Sarah and Chuck's size and build for them to assume their identities. Chuck removed any records or indications that they weren't going, inserted travel details that would get them there in time from their official departure points, and amended the details on file so that they would have no problems with getting in, while Anna and the others ensured that Zondra, Carina, Marco, Mei Ling, Javier, Mike, Sydney, Vinnie and Zoe could get in the back way without being detected.

Casey and Mary would be coming in the front doors with their Support Teams as soon as they'd taken out the Ring forces who were pretending to be terrorists. It had been decided that they were the best known after Chuck with the military and agencies, and that well known faces would help when dealing with the 'legitimate' security forces if they turned up early.

By the time the conference started, they had everything in place, and Sarah and Chuck had no trouble getting in, disguised as their assumed identities of the missing (Spanish and Russian respectively) delegates. It had been quite easy for Sarah to distract Gordon with a little cleavage and fawning as she slipped a phone into his pocket, and then she stood watch over Chuck while he reconfigured the Audio Visual system to accept a feed from the DCIA's office.

Once Gordon took the stage, Sarah called him on the phone that she'd planted on him to tell him that they were onto him and that she knew about the Ring Elders being there, and kept pushing his buttons until he'd warned the Elders to leave the Conference. He also sent other Ring agents to protect the Elders though, which they hadn't planned for, but they could deal with that. With that done, he asked where she was and she taunted him a little more before she told him that she was in his office, of course, knowing that he'd come after her.

Gordon entered his office cautiously, and he was taken aback to see what Sarah looked like at the moment, but his ego still made him underestimate her and decide that he could afford to wait to find out what she knew before he killed her (as expected, though of course he never had a hope of besting Sarah). She had her fun, playing him like any other dumb mark and feeding him the prompts needed to make him boast about everything the Ring were doing.

Once he'd given up enough information to prove the case against him and the Ring to the doubters, she interrupted him, hitting a few keys as she asked him. "Are you aware, Director, that my husband is a technical genius? Well he's a genius at everything, but especially technology."

She turned the screen around to face him and thanked him, because without his help they may not have been able to convince some of the people at the Conference of the truth. Only when he saw himself on the screen did he realise what she'd done, or more to the point, what she'd tricked him into giving up, and he pulled out his pistol to start firing madly at her.

She ducked below the edge of the desk before anything came close to her and worked her way around the desk to pop out around the corner and put a bullet into his shoulder, making him drop his pistol. That done, Sarah took out some of her anger at the bastard by getting a few extra hits in before she took him out with a kick to the head, tranqed him and secured him. She collected his pistols and magazines before taking out all the phones and shorting out the door locks to ensure that he remained where he was while she ran to back up the others.

By the time she was done with him, the Ring Elders were committed to their attempt to escape via the rear stairs, but they had found Carina, Vinnie, Mike, Sydney, Zoe and Javier waiting for them at the exit. The fifteen or so Ring agents who went with the Elders to guard them drew their weapons to engage them, but they didn't stand a chance, as the team at the bottom was well entrenched with assault rifles and body armour. When they saw what was happening, the Elders and the rear guard turned back, only to find that exit blocked by Zondra, Marco, Mei Ling, Chuck and Sarah, so they were now fighting on two fronts. All of their guards were down within a minute, either dead or wounded.

The Elders and their living guards were quickly secured and taken out via the exit that they'd been trying to escape by. They were all going to be interrogated, but not in any official capacity, because few of the methods that would be used on them would be even remotely legal. That wasn't something that Chuck or the others wanted to do, but playing by the rules when the other side had nothing but disdain for those rules was just a recipe for failure, and failure here had far reaching consequences that were too severe to be risked.

The Acting DCIA was the only exception, he was too visible to disappear that way so they left him in his office to be arrested by the authorities, but they knew that he wouldn't have been trusted with anything of any great value anyway. The Ring had always played a smart game, and smart people didn't trust idiots like that with their secrets.

* * *

They didn't get to leave D.C. straight after the Conference because they were stuck, having meetings with the President about what happened, and the foreign dignitaries that they'd saved that day as well. Casey and Mary had collected the information and pictures of their targets from the Ring's "terrorists", and this intel, along with the Ring's plan, had been shared with all of their targets. The President communicated their findings in regard to those agency heads who had already been bought by the Ring with their relevant heads of state, but while most used that intel to begin cleaning house aggressively, the reaction that he got from some of them showed that the heads of state had themselves been part of the Ring's plot.

Chuck and the team were queried about the Elders and others who'd disappeared, but they didn't share anything about that other than that they'd been disposed of. The DNI was the only one questioning them who knew Chuck well enough to read his expression when he gave his response, so only he realised that they were going to be taken somewhere to be interrogated before they were actually disposed of.

They left their vans in Washington and Diane organised a few more C-37s to go with CI's G550 and carry the extras and their 'guests' back home. This meant that everyone going back to Los Angeles would arrive together, landing at Bob Hope Airport, rather than waiting for others coming on the C-17, which would have to land at Edwards AFB.

* * *

It took them over a month to process the Elders and the others they'd taken alive with them. Even with Casey, Gertrude and Marco sharing the load of interrogating them with Mary to process them quicker though, the sheer volume of intel they were getting took a while. As they extracted the intel, it was passed on to the others to follow up, and within two months of the attempted coup, the Ring had been all but eradicated.

As far as they knew, aside from the unknown factor of Alexei Volkoff, all that was left of the Ring out there by that stage was the dregs who'd run before the hammer came down. One thing was certain, other than Volkoff, not one of the major players that they'd identified was still holding any positions of authority, and that had caused a major shake-up of the intelligence communities and governments around the world, as well as the United States' military, intelligence agencies and government.

* * *

Washington D.C. - April 2010

The President and the DNI had elevated Jane Bentley to Acting DCIA as soon as her predecessor was arrested, and once the Ring clean-up operation was wound up to the powers that be's satisfaction, Chuck, Sarah, Ellie, Casey and the rest of the senior members of the team who'd come to D.C. to support them in stopping the Ring's plan were called back to attend her official induction into the position.

Of course, there were other reasons to call them to D.C. as well. The primary one was the fact that the powers that be had used the opportunity presented by the groundswell of relief and gratitude that had arisen from their thwarting a global plot of the scale of the Ring's to combine the later stages of their plans for the realignment of all the Special Projects Groups and push it through the Senate while they had the support to do so. This meant that the six of them who would be running things (Chuck, Sarah, Ellie, Casey, Mary and Emma) were all being pushed to their final ranks for the plan that they and Diane had been working on.

Chuck was made a Vice Admiral in the Navy and Director for the Special Projects Group and other Cybercom groups, and Deputy Director of the Intersect Project. Sarah was now a Major General in the Air Force, Director of the Intersect Project and Deputy Director for the Special Projects Group. Ellie was a Rear Admiral in the Navy and Director of a number of Intelligence groups.

Casey was a Brigadier General in the Marines, Director of a Special Operations Group and Deputy Director of Mary's Intelligence Group. Emma was a Brigadier General in the Air Force and Deputy Director of Ellie's Intelligence Groups. Mary was a Brigadier General in the Army, Director of an Intelligence Group and Deputy Director of Casey's Special Operations Group.

They'd also been elevated to the Commanders of most of the groups that they'd previously been the Deputy Commanders for.

Anna was now a Captain in the Navy and Deputy Director of Chuck's Cybercom groups, while Carina was a Colonel in the Marines, Zondra was a Colonel in the Army and Dasha was a Colonel in the Air Force. The four of them were also appointed as the Deputy Commanders of some of the groups Commanded by Chuck and the others above them.

They were also required to go through the ceremonies for a Presidential Unit Citation for the actual Special Projects Group (Navy and Marines, but the Army and Air Force people in the core team didn't mind), and there were Presidential Medals of Freedom awarded and presented to the key people in the operation (awarded with distinction for Chuck, Sarah and Ellie, along with additional awards of the Defense Distinguished Service Medal and National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal for all three of them, and the National Intelligence Cross for Chuck and Sarah).

In addition to pushing their existing plan through, the President, DNI and Diane had used the opportunity to push something else through. The President appointed the DNI as his new National Security Advisor, and Diane was promoted to a full General before she was retired and appointed as the new DNI. Her long tenure as the head of the group that everyone was currently falling over themselves to be seen rewarding, and her part in many of the on-going achievements of that group had been used to push her appointment through the Senate quickly. Roan was also convinced, against his wishes, to accept the appointment as the new Deputy Director of the NSA at the same time.

Most of them breathed of relief when these appointments went through, as this meant that once they replaced the Administrator of the DEA, just about the entire United States Intelligence Community was under the control of trusted people. Jane Bentley was the Director of the CIA, they had full confidence in the Director of the FBI, Roan was in place to keep an eye on the things that had been getting past the Director of the NSA, and they were comfortable with the Directors of the DIA and ATF and Chief of the United States Marshals' Service. They still had doubts about Homeland Security, even with the new Secretary, but they didn't have the power to cause too much trouble.

On top of the American awards, Chuck, Sarah and Ellie had sessions with the French, German and British ambassadors, because Chuck was awarded the French Legion of Honour (Commander _)_ and the German Gold Cross of Honour for Outstanding Deeds, and was made an Honorary Military Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath. Sarah was awarded the French Legion of Honour (Commander) and the German Gold Cross of Honour for Outstanding Deeds, and was made an Honorary Military Dame Commander of the Order of the Bath.

Ellie was also awarded the French Legion of Honour (Commander) and the German Silver Cross of Honour for Outstanding Deeds (as the criteria for the Gold Cross specified 'at the risk of one's life'), and was made an Honorary Military Dame Commander of the Order of the Bath. (It had been made clear to all concerned that while Chuck and Sarah were the ones in the thick of it, Ellie had been planning and commanding all the activities from outside.)

While other countries may not have agreed, those three countries had seen their actions to be of great moment. They had seen proof that these people had stopped the heads of their primary intelligence agencies from being eliminated in order to replace them with the puppets of some international criminal organisation, and they were determined to show their gratitude.

The French and German ambassadors had been more than a little surprised to be addressed flawlessly and fluently in French or German by Chuck, Sarah AND Ellie when they were talking with them. Those American politicians and officials who were present in an attempt to get their time in the spotlight were rather put out by this, because these discussions had been going too fast for them to follow, and politicians and officials never liked not knowing what was going on.

Their aggravation levels only increased when they asked what had been discussed, because Chuck told them with a smile that they had been swapping recipes. They couldn't do anything to the heroes of the hour, so they had to try to swallow their reactions to that. This was only escalated when the British Ambassador had smiled charmingly and then had his own conversations with the heroes of the hour in fluent French, as he'd been amused by their reactions to the previous discussions, and he was having a great time watching them just about pop a blood vessel as they forced themselves to keep quiet.

The actual discussions they were having hadn't been about anything that concerned the government at all though, they were primarily around how three people of such apparent youth could have had the time to earn the medals and ranks that they had (because the powers that be had insisted that they all attend the award ceremonies in full uniform), but they'd just waved that off as just being in the right place at the right time, or more accurately, being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

When all of the ceremonies were finally done, they all piled back into their G550 and the C-37 that Diane organised for them and headed back to L.A. to catch up on what they'd missed doing while the core team had been tied up in D.C. playing nice with the politicians. They'd been stuck in D.C. for a few days this trip, but their part in the Ring clean up should be finished now, which hopefully meant that they could go back to working through the rest of the issues in front of them without having to worry about them. They didn't forget for a moment that they still had Volkoff and Roark out there to worry about though.

 **A/N: Yes, I realise that some parts of this are quite similar to what I've used in other stories, but where the story intersects with canon as much as it does at this point, there are only so many options on how to handle the events in 'my' chuckverse.**


	19. Bridal Veils and Baby Blankets

**The reason this one's late is a bit different, it's because I actually got tied up writing the NEXT chapter. I had an idea one night that I wanted to follow up, so I went to jot a few words down while I was thinking about it, but it got to over six thousand words before I stopped and came back to this chapter, sorry ;^)**

 **I made another change back in Brits, Lies and Videotape sorry, this being that Casey has gone back to his real name of Alexander John Coburn. He still answers to Casey or John but he wanted to use his real name. (OK, I feel that Coburn is classier than Casey.)**

 **Oh, and he and Ellie got married in Las Vegas before the big promotion ceremonies, so that Ellie could have the right name (Rear Admiral Eleanor Coburn) on her paperwork. They were too busy taking down the Ring to have the time to organise the proper wedding before that.**

 **This one's fluffier, mainly covering the weddings and births, with a few other snippets thrown in. The last part gets more serious again.**

 **U** **sual disclaimers, no rights to any characters portrayed, this isn't the real world and it's not a Disney Princess story.**

New York – May 2010

Vera was cursing that damned Roan Montgomery's silver tongue was they drew closer to the dates for the weddings. While it had been an exciting experience, she had thought that doing the gowns for Sarah's wedding had been a challenge with the tight time frames and multiple cross country flights required for the fittings, but Ellie, Zondra, Carina, Gertrude, Ilsa, Alex (Forrest), Vicky and Mei Ling's much were worse. With all of the Brides, the Matron of Honour and all but five of the Bride's Maids between them four to five months pregnant, they were having to make constant adjustments to most of the gowns. The weddings were all happening within a month or so as well. How had she let that old reprobate talk her into this?

This swathe of weddings was probably going to be the most tiring for Sarah, because she was the Matron of Honour for every wedding, and she was five months along with triplets. Ellie would be part of most of the weddings too, but she was only carrying one baby. Chuck and Casey were also in every wedding, but they weren't carrying their children like Sarah and Ellie were.

Ellie and John's was to be the only military wedding of the eight (OK, five if you counted the double weddings as one), and the only one to be held on the east coast for that matter. Carina, Zondra, Gertrude, Ilsa, Alex and Vicky were all getting married around Los Angeles, and they were making a covert incursion into the People's Republic of China so that Mei Ling could have her brother Li Wei and his family there for her wedding.

While Ellie's wedding was the biggest of them, it was probably the simplest for Vera, because none of her Bride's Maids (her soon to be step daughter, Anna and Dasha) were pregnant, so she only had to adjust the Bride's and the Matron of Honour's gowns. That being said, Vera knew that the President and most of the country's high ranking government, intelligence and military people would be at the wedding, even more than had been at Sarah's wedding, so the gowns had to be just right.

With the group's current standing, and how involved they'd been with the President and the top brass to bring down the Ring and clean out the corruption in the CIA and other agencies, many of these important figures had become like part of the family. In fact, given their own positions and having the DNI, the Deputy Director of the NSA and more recently, the Director of the CIA as established parts of their extended family, Rear Admiral Eleanor Clara Coburn and Brigadier General Alexander John Coburn were about as close as it came to America's Intelligence Royalty. The only ones who were likely to edge them out on that point were Vice Admiral Charles Philip Carmichael and Major General Sarah Lisa Carmichael. Given that the two Admirals were brother and sister though, the point was moot really.

With the distinguished guest list from Washington and John's mother coming from Missouri, Ellie and John had agreed that it would be easier to hold the wedding on the east coast. When they announced their decision, Uncle Roan sweet talked the owners of a lovely plantation house in Virginia into making it available for the venue. They flew Chuck's Continental Convertible out for Ellie and John to use, and Vera had oversight of the decorations, to ensure that they complemented the wedding gowns.

The Groom and Groom's Men were more of a challenge for Vera this time, as she had to get special dispensations from the Marines, Air Force and Army to allow the use of their discontinued dress white Uniforms, but with the White House behind her, the Joint Chiefs of Staff got the waivers she needed to keep the wedding party in white. On the day, even the men who'd grumbled about the waivers agreed that the wedding party looked a lot better in whites, and in fact they heard some of them musing about how it may not be a bad idea to formally bring them back for special occasions.

* * *

When they landed in Missouri to pick Casey's mother up and bring her to the wedding, Ellie's heart melted when Johanna joyously cried out "Johnny Boy!" and ran to him, with John picking her up and swinging her around like a child. In the eighteen years that she'd known John, she knew that he'd only managed to see her half a dozen times at most, and she knew how much that had hurt him. She could only imagine how his mother must have felt when he dropped off the face of the earth at the start of 1989 and she didn't hear from him for years.

For all the warm, loving mother that she was and how warmly she greeted Ellie though, Ellie saw the frost in the look she turned on her 'Johnny Boy' once she took in the fact that her daughter in law to be was pregnant. Ellie jumped in to assure her that they WERE married, but they'd just been too busy to arrange a proper wedding before this so they were doing it right now. That news only thawed the look she was giving John a little, so Ellie hastily called Alex down, banking on the fact that meeting her beautiful Granddaughter would be enough to warm her heart.

Ellie's ploy worked on that front, but that in turn led to a suspicious look in Ellie's direction from Johanna. Alex managed to disarm the situation though. "Grandma! Ellie was only eleven when I was born! Just what kind of man do you think Dad is?" Johanna looked shocked for a moment and then started laughing, and everyone else joined in.

Chuck and Sarah and the others came off the plane to be introduced as well, and they were having a fine old time when the pilot tried to insist that they had to go. Johanna didn't miss the look that Chuck turned on the man and from the way he scampered off, probably to change his shorts, she could see that there was another side to this charming young man who her son obviously loved as a brother.

Casey caught her calculating look and answered her unasked question. "Chuck is pretty much our boss, he's got two stars on me, hell, Ellie and Sarah have a star on me, but then they're all Navy and Air Force, so it doesn't mean much."

That last was said with a smile, but it prompted a question from Johanna. "Stars? What haven't you told me Johnny?"

Casey kicked himself "Yeah, stars Ma. I'm a Brigadier General in the Marines, Ellie's a Rear Admiral in the Navy, Sarah's a Major General in the Air Force and Chuck's a Vice Admiral in the Navy. Chuck and Sarah's mothers are also Brigadier Generals. I can explain on the plane, but that guy who had to go change his shorts did have a point, we really do need to get going."

At the plantation house, Vera had her people get some dresses done quickly for Johanna so she could fit in with the rest of the guests better, and she sat with Mary, Stephen and Emma through the ceremony itself. Ellie was happy to have her father at his best to walk her down the aisle, especially after they'd all but given up hope that he'd ever get back to what he should be for so long.

Just as with Chuck and Sarah's wedding, they had a separate sabre arch from each of the services, and those who questioned it were once again quickly shut up by the dangerous looking special operations people who were there to honour the Bride and Groom, and their family.

* * *

At the reception, Johanna handled meeting the President and the other notable figures at the wedding with remarkable aplomb. They in turned vied to tell her stories about her son's remarkable achievements. For all how wonderful it was to hear how these powerful men respected and admired her Johnny Boy though, that didn't stop her noting the way that he, his bride and the other members of their immediate family were having very serious discussions with these powerful men, at their wedding.

It was disconcerting to see her beautiful daughter in law switching from a bubbly bride to a very serious and powerful woman having what were obviously important discussions on matters of state and the like in an instant, while she was still wearing her lovely Vera Wang wedding gown! Eventually Johanna pulled her aside and asked her why they were having these talks at their wedding. Ellie sighed. "Mrs Coburn…."

"Ma or Johanna please Eleanor, you're family now!"

"OK….Ma, please call me Ellie though, that's what everyone I'm close to does. Anyway, the reason that we're talking business today is that we don't want to be interrupted on our honeymoon any more than we absolutely have to. We know that we'll have to take some calls, what we do won't stop for our honeymoon, but we're trying to clear the decks as much as we can before we leave. We've only got a week because we have to be back next weekend for Carina and Zondra's double wedding. The weekend after that is Alex and Vicky's wedding and the weekend after that it's Gertie and Ilsa's. After that we're flying to China for Mei Ling's wedding."

"You only get a week for your honeymoon? No. That's not enough!"

"It's more than Chuck and Sarah got, their honeymoon was spent in the Keep…." She saw the confused look on Johanna's face. "You've got to come see it, it's lovely. It's their Penthouse on the top of our building, the building is El Castillo, The Castle, so when Uncle Roan had the Penthouse built it was called the Keep. Anyway, they were dealing with issues every day and Chuck was putting in five or six hours work every night while Sarah was asleep, to try and have as much time as he could with her while she was awake, so if we can get most of the week to ourselves we'll be doing well."

That made Johanna look over at the tall, handsome young man in his dress whites with a disturbing array of medal ribbons on his chest. Alex, Johnny's father, had been with the Marines in Vietnam and he'd explained the medals that he and other heroes had received to her. There was nothing wrong with her memory and she saw the ribbons for those medals among the many that both Ellie's little brother and Johnny wore. That first ribbon in particular said that there was something very special about that nice young man, but one part of what Ellie had said raised a question. "How could he put in that much time working while she slept? Doesn't HE ever sleep?"

Ellie shook her head. "Not much, he rarely sleeps more than an hour or two a night, we get that from Mom I think."

Johanna suddenly realised that she was keeping Ellie away from Johnny on their wedding day, so she kissed her on the cheek, apologised, and told her to go spend time with her husband. Ellie hugged her, kissed her and did as she was told.

After the reception, Ellie and Casey flew off to the island for their honeymoon with a Shadow Security protection detail in Stephen and Leslie's latest creation.

* * *

One of the side projects that Stephen and Leslie had been working on was a viable VTOL/STOL transport loosely based on the Moller M600 idea. They'd had this working years ago, but it wasn't anything close to what they were after with the technology they had available. Then, after the team took down Fulcrum, Chuck had managed to get the patents for Stephen's designs and the fortune that Roark had made from them allocated to Stephen.

Stephen had used a large lump of the money he acquired from Roark to buy the rights to play with the designs and concepts of a near hypersonic transport from a British concern called HyperMach. The SonicStar concept was amazing, but HyperMach didn't have engineers brilliant enough to make their concepts workable. Stephen and Leslie were brilliant, even though they were limited by their issues at the time, and they had managed to adapt a lot of the SonicStar technology, such as the engines and plasma emitter skin to reduce drag, to their VTOL/STOL concept and use that to take a big step towards making their VTOL concept workable.

Then, after the two of them had loaded the Carmichael Intersect, it repaired all the damage that had been done to them so they both regained their true brilliance. Stephen, and especially Leslie, differed from Chuck in that while he was up with the best in many fields, he didn't focus on any one field. Stephen and Leslie, however, focussed their brilliance purely on Engineering and Science subjects. They also got a symbiotic rhythm going when they were working together and bouncing ideas off each other on projects that enabled them to take a simple idea and turn it into something amazing, and that's just what they did with their VTOL/STOL transport concept. Once they'd got the initial six seater prototype working properly, they'd tripled the size to scale that up to the transport that they'd had in mind when they started down this path.

They were now working on a yet bigger version of the VT, and on how to turn the HyperMach's SonicStar concept into a viable hypersonic transport, but what they had in the current VT was amazing in and of itself. About sixty feet long, it had equivalent capacity to a C-27J Spartan transport, with well over 7500 miles range at Mach 1 and full VTOL capability. This meant that they could, say, take off from the roof garden atop the Castle, fly to Beijing, and put down somewhere out of sight there so that Mei Ling could meet her brother and get married with him there. That was, of course, exactly what they were planning to do.

* * *

Ellie and Casey came back from their honeymoon refreshed and happy, and Ellie went straight into the final fittings for her dress for the weekend's wedding. Carina and Zondra had wanted a wedding just like Sarah's, and the owners of the estate they'd used for Sarah and Chuck's wedding had been happy to agree to having another wedding there, so they got it. The next weekend, it was a beach wedding for Alex and Vicky's, and the weekend after it was a Russian Orthodox church for Gertrude and Ilsa's wedding. The only wedding left then was Mei Ling and Javier's.

That one was going to be tiring, especially for the girls, because they had a ten hour flight to Beijing just to get to it. Then, once they confirmed that the wedding venue was secure from government forces and set up a perimeter, they'd have the wedding. After they gave Mei Ling some time to catch up with Li Wei, his wife and her nieces, they'd fuel up the VT and spend another ten hours flying home to Los Angeles.

That month of weddings took a lot out of them, especially Sarah, that point was brought home to everyone when she agreed to work from bed for a few days. When she showed that she was tired enough to give in on that, Ellie dictated a week of bed rest to her. Of course, she couldn't turn her back on her work, but the master bedroom in the Keep was set up with just about everything she needed to work, even more than the other master bedrooms in the Castle were.

* * *

Over the next few months, Stephen and Leslie got the UAV flight prototype working for their hypersonic concept, which they'd decided to dub the HyperNova. After a month or so of testing they decided that the concept was proven and viable and Stephen arranged for them to start laying up the airframe for it down on the island. The primary difference between what they were building and what HyperMach was trying to build, other than the fact that they'd managed to get the technology working when HyperMach couldn't, was the fact that the HyperNova's construction was mainly carbon fibre. This created something that was stronger while at the same time a fraction of the weight and that allowed them to extend the capabilities of the design.

Part of the team's modus operandi when they were taking down nefarious individuals or organisations was that they wiped them out financially. They'd not only clean out all of their liquid assets, they'd sell off all their other assets and clean out the proceeds of those salesas well. When all of your funds suddenly disappear, your ability to face threats is crippled and you are extremely vulnerable, so that's what they did just before they struck. As far as the rest of the world could see, that money just disappeared, as there were records of legitimate transfers going out of their accounts, and then nothing.

What actually happened though was that they punted it around the world in thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, of transactions until it landed in their secret accounts in tax havens spread around the world. Chuck and the technical team followed these transactions and scrubbed any record of them from just about all of the systems between the bad guys' banks and their banks in the tax havens. They'd leave one or two hops at the start and finish of the money trail, but everything else disappeared without a trace.

This was actually a very lucrative practice because they'd also wipe out anyone who was in bed with the ones they took down as well, both to prevent them from helping the ones they took down and because you don't get in bed with people like that unless you're cut from the same cloth. They collected billions when they took down Fulcrum, and a hundred times that when they took down the Ring.

Back when they took down Fulcrum, they'd almost doubled what they already had hidden away and they realised that they had the money to do pretty much whatever they wanted, so they started thinking about just what that was. The upshot of that was that they bought themselves an island down in the Caribbean. The island group that it was part of had formed a small nation which just wanted a peaceful existence. To that end they had aligned themselves with the United States and allowed them to maintain a base there in order to kept others out. They never referred to their island as anything but 'the island', to avoid letting anything slip about it.

Most of the island itself wasn't really usable, because aside from the coastal strip it was all extremely mountainous, but it was a beautiful location with perfect weather just about year 'round, a little piece of paradise. That prompted an idea which in turn led to their stated purpose for buying the island being to build an exclusive resort, Xanadu (which would cater only to the uber rich) on a protected part of the island. This was their justification for building a runway long enough to handle airliners, to cater for those guests who used planes that size as their private jets, and they had docks that were designed to handle the biggest mega-yachts in the world for the same reason. They also built a hangar that was easily big enough to take an airliner off to the side of the runway against a cliff face to protect their guests' jets from the weather.

Building the resort was largely a cover for building a massive underground fortress complex. The main entrance was through the hangar, and the chambers inside of that entrance could easily accommodate well over a dozen airliners. This was where they were laying up the airframe for the HyperNova and the additional VT airframes that they were building as well.

Coming up with the technology to allow them to excavate for and create the fortress had been an interesting challenge for Stephen, Leslie and Chuck, but they came up with ultrasonic mining equipment and a process to render down what had been excavated into an ultra-dense building material that took up a fraction of the volume. They used up everything that was extracted by making the walls, ceiling and floors of all the chambers up to metres thick, and using the same material to build the runway and dock as well. Of course, they also had to create a clean power plant capable of running a quite large town to run that equipment, but that just added to the challenge.

They had to laugh, as they had come up with the mega-yacht story to justify putting in the facilities that they knew they'd need to handle the supply ships, but now that they were working on a way to bring the Contessa and Volkoff's Spetsnaz Otriad into the fold that dock would be perfect for the Contessa. Chuck was leaning towards something he'd heard in Australia one time he was there as the new name for the Contessa, Moonyah, which was apparently an Aboriginal word for 'safe house'. He'd liked that, and it seemed fitting for the home of the Otriad.

Once everyone was back from their honeymoons and settled back into work, they were actually tasked with doing something about Volkoff Industries. The reasoning of the world's leaders was that, now that they'd dealt with the Ring, Volkoff Industries was the biggest threat left out there. That worked into their plans anyway, because they weren't comfortable having Volkoff out there, waiting to come after them, so they accepted the assignment and started working openly on it.

* * *

Pasadena – July 2010

At six or seven months along, all of the girls who were pregnant were starting to slow down, Sarah was the only one who was carrying more than one baby, but it was knocking the others about too.

Sofia was the only one who didn't have the baby's father there to support her, largely because she had no idea who her baby's father was, but that didn't seem to bother her and she had plenty of support from the family. She'd already happily accepted Yuri and Rob's offer to be the defacto fathers for her child, because she knew that they'd love and protect her as if she were their own.

They were finding that the scope of Volkoff Industries and its nefarious activities was bigger than the Ring had been, so it was taking time to locate and get into all of its little hideaways, virtually as well as in the physical world. As a result, their children were born well before they were in any position to go after Volkoff.

They would have done whatever was required to ensure that everything went well for one baby, but with thirteen expected in a period of a month or two, they'd created everything needed to have a top delivery and natal care unit there in the Dungeon. They'd also engaged the best obstetrics team in the country exclusively until after the last baby had been born. Sarah was the one that they were worried about the most, with the triplets, but they were also worried about Gertrude and to a lesser degree Zoe, as they were older. This wasn't Zoe's first child though, so they expected that to make it easier for her.

* * *

Pasadena – September 2010

Sofia's baby was born first, and she was perfect and beautiful. Sofia gave her the name of Yani Roberta Simms and Rob was listed as the father. Luckily it looked as though her resemblance to him would be good enough that no-one would question that. Sofia had moved into Yuri and Rob's apartment before Yani was born, so as soon as they were settled, they moved them 'home'.

Ellie was next, and Clara Johanna Coburn was just as perfect, and to her parents and immediate family, even more beautiful. They'd flown Johanna out when Ellie was getting close, so she got to be there for the birth of her second granddaughter, instead of finding out about her when she was twenty as she had with Alexandra.

At least this one was knowingly given her name as her middle name. Kathleen had given Alex the feminine version of Casey's name, not knowing that he had in fact been given 'John' as the male version of his mother's name, because he was named after both his parents. That was part of the reason that he had always been called 'Johnny' rather than 'Alex', the other part being the fact that his father swore that he'd never have his son called 'Junior'.

Ever impatient, Sarah was next, and while her labour and deliver was longer and more difficult than the others', she and the babies came through fine. Charlotte Mary Carmichael was born first, followed by Charlene Emma Carmichael twenty minutes later, and Samuel Stephen Carmichael came forty minutes after her, already the gentleman and following the 'ladies first' rule. All of the babies were perfect and beautiful, and Chuck was delighted that Lottie and Charlie were identical little blue eyed blonde copies of their mother, though they did have his curls and a bit of a resemblance to him.

Sarah was a little put out that their children didn't all look like Chuck as she'd been hoping, but she was happy that Sammie had his brown hair and eyes, and his smile. She could see that he'd be a tiny Chuck except for mostly having her features, so that was enough to assuage her disappointment that the girls weren't little feminine versions of their father as well.

The other babies arrived soon after that, with the last being born in the middle of October. As expected, Gertrude had had the most difficult delivery after Sarah, but both she and her son, Jerrod Marco Nyland, came through fine, even though he was a rather big baby.

Once it was confirmed that the mothers and babies were all fine and healthy, the obstetrics team were paid off, with hefty bonuses on top of the excellent fee rates offered to get them to express thanks for their help, and went back to their normal lives.

No-one was surprised when Sarah was back at work within two weeks of her babies being born.

* * *

When they officially took over the Special Projects and other groups, the Special Projects offices had been set up on Level One for all of them who were O6 and above to deal with people who came to see them in that capacity. Sarah, Chuck and Ellie especially had been splitting their time between their Carmichael Industries and Fox Consulting offices on the ground floor and their Special Projects offices on Level One.

Only Chuck and Sarah had their offices on Level One in the same location as their Ground Floor ones to keep the bathroom with the private elevator to the Keep between them, everyone else was moved about. Ellie was on the other side of Chuck now, while Emma and Carina were on the other side of Sarah. Casey was across from Ellie, Anna across from Chuck, Mary across from Sarah, and Dasha and Zondra's offices finished that row. They also had a few conference rooms there for larger meetings.

The Special Projects offices were only set up for the senior officers, with their aide de camps out front. At least all the offices had shared bathrooms and plenty of room for cribs and the like, because most of their aides were the other mothers. This was logical as motherhood had taken the women out of field operations, but hadn't stopped them doing other things. Casey had Sofia as a 2nd Lieutenant. Ellie had Mei Ling as a Captain and Alex (McHugh) as a 2nd Lieutenant. Chuck had Alex (Forrest) as a Major and Vicky as a Captain. Sarah had Ilsa as a Captain and Zoe as a 1st Lieutenant, Emma had Lynn a 2nd Lieutenant and Mary had Hannah (who was one of the other analyst/consultants from Fox) as a 2nd Lieutenant.

It didn't take long for their babies to get used to spending much of their time in the offices, and for Lottie, Charlie and Sammie to get used to be moved between their mother and father's offices whenever one or the other of them had meetings. Sarah handled the feedings directly for the most part, but Chuck did his part when they needed changing or whatever. That wasn't an issue though, whoever was free at the time would step in to change or hold any of the babies when they needed it.

For the first few months, the triplets were generally fussy unless they knew Sarah or Chuck were right there, so it was common to walk into Sarah or Chuck's office and find them working away with one or two babies in their arms.

* * *

For all the size and complexity of Volkoff Industries, the fact that the legitimate parts of the business had to have a public face meant that now that the wedding and pregnancy distractions were behind them, they were moving along pretty well. The legitimate parts of the business did create a dilemma though, in that they didn't want the innocent people who relied on them for their livelihoods to suffer. They also knew that there would be an overflow from the nefarious side of Volkoff Industries into that side, so they were going to have to filter those elements out of any measures they took.

After four or five months, Chuck was relatively happy about the measures they'd come up with, in that most of the legitimate parts were being sold to parts of Volkoff Industries legitimate competitors, and Carmichael Industries was indirectly taking over those parts that were interesting and/or useful to them. The people working for the parts that were sold off probably wouldn't be any better off than they had been under Volkoff Industries, but they shouldn't be any worse off either.

By this stage, Mary had reached out to the commanders of Volkoff's Spetsnaz Otriad on the Contessa, and she'd had arranged for a meeting to discuss their business. They were suspicious, but also in awe of the massive aircraft that arrived over the Contessa, and put down on the helicopter landing deck once they'd moved the helicopters on the deck out of the way (Stephen and Leslie had gotten the bigger VT airframe built and operational by then, as well as the HyperNova, and the VT Heavy was over two hundred and ten feet long with equivalent capacity (in volume anyway) to the C-5 Galaxy). Using the VTH was a calculated ploy to impress the Spetsnazovtsi with what they had available to them, and it worked. They could see that from the way these experienced and hardened warriors were all but drooling over the possibilities of one of these things in operations.

When they exited the VTH, all eyes were on them. The older men and officers all knew Mary, Marco and Gertrude, and many of them knew Yuri as well. Most of the Spetsnazovtsi knew Chuck and Casey, as they'd operated with or against them many times. Mike and Rob were unknowns, but to an experienced eye, it was obvious that these two were formidable warriors as well. All in all this group was quite impressive and they were respected by the Spetsnazovtsi, though they were all shocked when Mary indicated Chuck and Casey as she said. "I believe that you know my son and son in law?" That made them all stare at Chuck, but there were many nods as they thought. 'Yes, I can see Mowgli being the Frost Queen's son, it would take a mother like that to create something like him!' They also looked at Casey with a smile, thinking. 'It would take the daughter of the Frost Queen to tame Baloo as well.'

They sat down to talk to the commanders of the Spetsnazovtsi. These men were aware of much of what had been done to Mary while she was trapped in Volkoff's world, and this had seeded their turning away from Volkoff, because they had been enraged that the legendary Królowa Mrózu, hero of the Soviet Union, could be treated this way. When they were presented with the rest of the reasons why the family was taking down Volkoff and his organisation, they had no trouble in agreeing to withdraw the Spetsnazovtsi when the call came through. They were also quite enthusiastic about joining this group when they did so, as they could see that it was run by people who had earned the respect of their peers, and who would not ask others to do things that they would not do themselves. It would be a new, and good, experience to be commanded by superiors such as these.

With the key reason for the meeting out of the way, the commanders filled them in on the systems and personnel that they would be up against when they stormed Volkoff's Moscow citadel, and other key installations that the Spetsnazovtsi were responsible for guarding. They brought in some of their people to fill in details when they didn't have them.

Finding out that Volkoff had over a hundred ex-Ring and Fulcrum agents at the citadel was a worry, as obviously more of them had survived than they'd thought, but the commanders assured them that no more than a handful of them were worth worrying about. That Hugo Panzer was probably the biggest threat among the agents. Chuck and Casey looked at each other when that name came up, they'd enjoy getting payback on him for Carina's sake.

For the rest, the guards were still the thugs that they had been when Mary was in that world, none of them were soldiers and they couldn't handle themselves in a fight. There were generally about fifty to sixty of them in the citadel and maybe half that at the other major facilities. With Chuck and Mary's eidetic memories, nothing they were told was lost.

They brought the Contessa's Captain and First Officer in at that point, as they were part of the arrangements that they would be making. They had been the Moskva's Captain and First Officer for the last phase of her Soviet Navy career after she'd been re-powered with the COGOG gas turbine propulsion system out of the guided missile cruiser Marshal Ustinov and rebuilt to convert her into an amphibious assault ship for supporting Spetsnaz operations. They had gone with her when Volkoff forced the navy to sell her to him, as she was a unique class of ship and no-one else knew how to command her.

The frequencies and codes that would be used for all communications once the assault started were agreed and recorded, and Chuck committed to delivering the Spetsnazovtsi at the citadel and other sites to the Contessa with the VTH. At the confused looks he got at that, he pointed to the helicopter deck and the Spetsnaz commanders nodded, smiling. Once the Spetsnazovtsi were on board, the Contessa would depart and head to the rendezvous point that they'd arranged.

With all the details agreed, Chuck went over the ship's systems to identify any tracking and communications systems and showed the technical officers how to disable or reconfigure them so that they'd only operate on the frequencies that they agreed and send the signals that they were meant to.

In the same period as they were doing this, the team were also making arrangements with the authorities in the countries where Volkoff Industries were operating to get their support on the final assault. Even in Russia, where Volkoff's power was the greatest, they had agreement and support from senior FSB officials who did not like what Volkoff was doing to their country, so they'd have FSB Spetsnaz and other units supporting the attack on the citadel and other facilities within Russia.

Chuck, Anna, and the rest of the technical team were uncovering and going through all of Volkoff Industries' systems, mining them for information or just copying off entire databases where the indications were that it would take a while to extract everything of use. They were mining the systems with malware bombs as they went through, so that they could wipe them out with the right trigger when the time came.

At the same time, they were constructing what they needed to wipe out all of Volkoff Industries', and Alexei Volkoff's, finances to set them up for the final assault. Indications were that what they'd take from Volkoff would more than double the funds they had in their offshore accounts that were hidden away in the tax havens. That made for a figure that astounded even them.

The breakfast meetings that they were still having nearly every day played out entirely differently if you were watching the video, or listening to the audio. On the face of it, it was a close group of young families having breakfast, looking after their babies and chattering away happily. The only part that looked incongruous was that the figure on the screen up on the wall was formally dressed most days (at least she wasn't in uniform any more).

When the audio was added though, it became something else entirely, as their discussions were about intelligence and military operations, how to reduce or eliminate collateral damage or civilian casualties in the operations they were planning and the like. For others, it would have been disturbing to listen to these beautiful young women discussing topics like this as they were breast feeding their babies, but for this family, it was just another day in the life.

* * *

By the middle of March 2011, they were ready to move on Volkoff Industries. Sarah, Carina, Zondra, Gertrude, Zoe, Ilsa and Alex were a little miffed that they had to sit this out, especially Gertrude, Zoe, Ilsa and Alex, because Volkoff's world was the corruption of what had been their world, so they wanted to be there to see it come down. They did, however, accept that their place was looking after their babies and took up their support roles with good grace, after they made sure the rest of the team knew what would happen to them if anything was allowed to happen to their babies' fathers.

Casey wasn't happy about being separated from Chuck and letting him take down Volkoff's citadel without him, as they'd been partners for nineteen years and he'd always been at Chuck's side in dangerous situations. He accepted that he needed to command the assaults on other significant Volkoff installations though, and had to concede that Mary could watch her son's back at least as well as he could.

The assaults all went to plan, they pulled the trigger to wipe out the financials a few hours before the assault, scrubbing the money trails as they always did. That meant that everyone was panicking about where the money went and whether they were going to get paid (a big problem when everyone working for you is only there for the money), so they just fell apart when the tech team pulled the triggers on the malware bombs spread throughout the Volkoff systems and shut down the power on the attack sites.

The power going off was the signal for the Spetsnazovtsi to leave. Chuck and Mary had given orders to the assault teams they were taking in to let the Spetsnazovtsi pass, so when the Spetsnaz commander saluted them, Chuck directed him to the park where the VTH would be landing and wished him well, then they went in.

As the Spetsnaz commanders had said, the vast majority of the agents and guards they faced were like sheep to the slaughter, and they cut through them with very little resistance. When Chuck faced Panzer in Volkoff's office, he couldn't be bothered playing with him, so he just put a bullet between his eyes. Most of the ones that the Spetsnaz commanders had identified as being more than the rest were in Volkoff's office to provide the last line of defence, but Chuck and Mary put them down inside twenty seconds. They may have been better, but they didn't have a chance against the best.

They just tranqued Volkoff and his advisors, as they were taking them back to the Contessa for questioning. Mary was upset that the bastard who'd caused the most trouble for her when she was there, that little weasel Riley who'd never understood when she called him Wormtongue (even though Volkoff always laughed when she did) wasn't there. He'd somehow escaped, as had the older woman who was apparently Volkoff's favourite mistress now.

They had Volkoff and the others carried up to the roof where a VTM (what they'd called the VT before) was waiting. They went though everything they could find, taking any files, storage devices and computers that may be significant with them as well. All up, they'd been in the citadel less than an hour when they handed control of the facility over to the FSB and left.

Casey and Marco were on the Contessa by the time they arrived. They only had a small team of the Shadow Security people and one of the VTMs with them on the Contessa, as everyone else had been sent back with the VTH or the other VTMs, and the HyperNova had been sent back as well.

Mary started working on Volkoff while Casey and Marco worked on his advisors, and the advisors went over the side a long time before she was done with Volkoff. He refused to give anything up at first, but the more he resisted, the more she broke out what she'd learnt in his world, often as the recipient. When she finally decided that she had gotten what she could from him, she finished him, and it wasn't a pretty sight when she did.

Chuck stayed away when Mary was working on Volkoff, because even though he was sure that Volkoff was getting no more than he deserved, he couldn't stomach watching it. He didn't see what went over the side once Mary was finished with him.

There was something else that was distracting Chuck from what was being done elsewhere on the ship anyway, because there was one particular computer that he hadn't paid much attention to the last time they were on the ship, but he could see now that it wasn't like anything he'd ever seen before.

When Mary finished with Volkoff, Chuck tabled his questions about that one computer for later, because they had to get back, and he had a mountain of work in front of him anyway, going through what they'd taken from the rest of the Volkoff systems.

 ** **A/N:**** ** **OK, you got your Triplets Wil**** ** **f**** ** **, so stop complaining ;^)****

 ** **Yes, Mary's aide IS Hannah from the show, IE: Kristin Kruek. Don't worry, even if she does pine after Chuck, he'**** ** **ll never stray or encourage her,**** ** **he's a deliriously happy family man**** ** **. I just needed another junior Aide De Camp and wanted someone shorter than Mary.****


	20. Honey Badger

**T** **his isn't anything like the fluffy one I just put up.**

 **I** **f anyone liked Honey Woodcomb,** **Vivian McArthur, Devon Woodcomb** **,** **Riley or Alexei Volkoff,** **you WON'T like this chapter. Consider yourselves warned.**

 **Actually, if you're squeamish you won't like this either,** **as** **this chapter is rather dark** **and there are numerous deaths, only one that I'd consider regrettable though.**

 **You may want to look up Honey Badgers to understand why the name is used, it ain't what you think.**

 **U** **sual disclaimers, no rights to any characters portrayed, this isn't the real world and it's not a Disney Princess story.**

'The Island' - April 2011

Going through the computer system that they discovered on the Contessa, Chuck had been impressed, because Volkoff must have found someone truly brilliant to create this. Whatever was in the data stored on this computer wasn't just encrypted, it had been fragmented and jumbled to the point that nothing usable could be recovered from it without using the dedicated access engine that had been specifically created for it, this Hydra key as one of the computer techs had heard Volkoff referring to it. Basically, what this came down to was that Volkoff had had the most secure database that he'd ever heard of created, it was the only system he'd ever come up against that he couldn't crack, and didn't believe that anyone else could either.

Considering that they hadn't recovered anything really sensitive from any of Volkoff's other systems and the Contessa had been Volkoff's secret base of operations, Chuck was pretty sure that this system was the repository of all those secrets that Volkoff had been using to control governments around the world. Obviously, that made the information on the system something that couldn't be allowed to escape again, but Chuck didn't believe that they could afford to destroy the system until they found out just who Volkoff had owned and what he'd used to control them. That meant that they HAD to find and get control of this Hydra key, but to do that, first they had to work out just what it was.

Chuck considered their options on this, and he decided that they couldn't afford to leave that system on the Contessa, or rather the Moonyah as she became once he'd shuffled her ownership through a few dead ends, as they couldn't be certain that there wasn't a mole on the ship who could re-enable communications to the system and let whoever had this Hydra key access and use the system again. That was why Chuck flew down to the island with a tech team when the Moonyah docked to remove the system from the ship, bringing it back to install it in the Dungeon. He didn't ask what had happened to the people who'd disappeared from the ship since he'd been on-board to look at the system when she and her complement agreed to come over to the family, because he really didn't want to know.

* * *

It wasn't too long before they started hearing whispers that someone was looking for the Contessa, and they paid attention as they would have had to been quite close to Volkoff to even know about the Contessa. The interesting thing though was that these whispers weren't coming from Russia, they were coming from England. Soon after that, Mary went white when she saw a report about how an elderly woman had been tortured and killed in Somerset in England, and Chuck demanded to know what was going on.

The alarm bells kept going off when she pleaded with him, in tears, to find out the name of the woman who had been tortured, because his mother was one of the toughest people he knew and he'd NEVER heard her plead like that before. Chuck went into the British Police systems, and he went white himself when he found the victim's name, Dorothy Winterbottom.

Chuck just left that up on screen as he turned and looked at her "That can't be a coincidence!"

Mary shook her head, breaking down. "No, that's Hartley's mother!"

"WHY? What did they stand to gain by torturing an old woman to death?"

Mary shook her head again "I don't know, but it must be associated with whoever it is who's been looking for the Contessa."

"Have you talked to her in recent years? Did she tell you anything at all that might help us find the answers here?"

The way that Mary just stared at him, horrified, filled Chuck with foreboding.

"Mom? Have you talked to Mrs Winterbottom at all since you came back?"

"I couldn't!"

Sarah had an idea where this was going and tried to stop Chuck but he asked the question before she could. "Why, why couldn't you talk to her?"

"Because I knew I couldn't talk to her without telling her what he did!" They had to strain to hear what she said in a broken voice after that. "He raped me, and he had his men rape me as well to try and break me whenever he doubted me. Every time, I was expected to just accept it as due punishment for making him doubt me. He was always her little boy to her, so I could never tell Dot that he'd done that to me, it would have destroyed her."

Chuck couldn't speak after that, so he just stepped up to embrace her, in tears. Mary couldn't speak either, so they just clung to each other.

Anyone looking around the room at that moment would have seen that though they may have been crying less, it was the female agents who were hit the hardest by what Mary said. Even the ones who'd been lucky enough to avoid being subjected to that so far had been living in fear of it happening to them, and the ones who had been subjected to it were terrified of it happening again.

Ellie injected Mary with a sedative while she was occupied, but when she tried to do the same to Chuck he stopped her, saying that he had work to do. He brusquely asked Casey to take his mother to the medical centre, and when he took her off his hands turned to head into the operations centre. Sarah put a hand on his arm to stop him but he shook his head, kissing her and saying that he needed to concentrate on the job just now or he'd explode. His face as he kissed her, and then kissed Lottie, Charlie and Sammie, was the only softness that anyone saw in him over the next several hours. They all stayed away from him as they could see what he'd said to Sarah was the straight truth.

* * *

A driven, angry Chuck is even more effective than 'normal' Chuck, and in the next five hours he ripped apart systems around the world to track down the source of those whispers about the Contessa. As he was starting the search, he sent a call off to the island for them to get the VTH organised to be sent to England with a Spetsnaz company and half a dozen vans within the next two hours, and get the HyperNova organised to be sent to L.A. to pick them up for a trip to England.

When he finished, he'd identified an estate north of London that he had a high degree of confidence was the source of those whispers, and he turned to Ellie, speaking for the first time since he called the island. "Can you get her out of it please El? She deserves the chance to say whether she's coming or not."

Ellie nodded, kissed him on the cheek and went to bring their mother out of the sedative without a word. Sarah looked at Chuck, but he shook his head "I need you to stay here and keep what matters the most to me, you and our children, safe. I won't do anything stupid, but I am going to get the answers to what's happening. I won't allow them to make a comeback!"

He held her for a little while, and kissed her when she nodded her acquiescence, whispering. "I love you!"

Just then, Ellie came back to say. "Mom's coming out of it now." He nodded and kissed her on the cheek as he passed her on the way to the medical centre.

None of them were surprised when Mary insisted that she was coming with them, or when their wives (and Sofia) insisted that Casey, Mike, Vinnie, Marco, Yuri and Javier were going with them as well. Anna pointed out that Chuck needed another tech in case he was busy, and told him that she was coming as well.

After collecting their weapons and gear, they headed to the roof to pile into a couple of VTLs to take them to the airfield where the HyperNova was waiting. It would have attracted too much attention to have the HyperNova land at a major airport like Bob Hope. At the airstrip, it took another fifteen minutes to convert the VTLs into transport mode and load them into the back of the HyperNova, but they needed them at the other end. They'd be putting the HyperNova down at an emergency military airstrip, then going the rest of the way in the VTLs.

Once they were in the air, Chuck sent the target destination to the team in the VTH, so that they could put down somewhere close by and have most of their people in the vans, ready to go in. Even though they'd left over five hours earlier than the HyperNova, the Spetsnazovtsi from the VTH had only just arrived when the two VTLs put down, because the VTH had been travelling at Mach 1 while the HyperNova was travelling at Mach 5.

* * *

They scanned the estate and found about a dozen heat signatures inside the manor house, and twenty more on patrol outside. The Spetsnazovtsi took out the external guards quickly and quietly, then they all organised to breach the house. The eight internal guards were down inside thirty seconds, and they were left with four people in the house. Mary and some of the Spetsnazovtsi knew the older man by sight, it was Volkoff's missing advisor, Riley. Chuck and Mary knew the younger man, as it was Devon Fucking Woodcomb. While they'd never met her, they also knew from pictures that the older woman was his mother, Honey Woodcomb.

That just left the younger woman to be identified, so they turned to her and Mary asked "Who are you?"

Riley started to say "Don't….", but Mary flashed a look at one of the Spetsnazovtsi and he was shut up by a rifle butt to the back of the head, which hopefully cracked his skull.

Mary turned back to the young woman "I asked you who you are, DON'T make me ask again."

When the girl answered. "I am Vivian McArthur, and this is my house, who are YOU?" Unhurriedly, and without backing down or showing any fear at the violence or dead bodies laying about, Mary shared a look with Chuck. This one was definitely part of Volkoff's world, a civilian should be terrified of all this.

Mary had already taken a dislike to this girl. "You can call me Królowa Mrózu. Obviously your name tells us nothing, so perhaps a better question is WHAT are you then, how do you fit in with these people?"

Vivian just glared at her. "I will not be questioned in my own house, leave!" Her manner said that she was accustomed to being feared and obeyed, and expected immediate compliance.

Mary snorted "Look around girl, in case you haven't worked it out yet, you aren't in charge here any more. The fact that you're apparently in league with Wormtongue over there and that cockroach Woodcomb says that you're not the type of people that I care to be nice to, so I'd suggest you that watch your tongue. Now answer the damned question!"

Vivian had noted how Honey Woodcomb had paled when this woman had said that she was Królowa Mrózu, and she did have a point, they had all the guns here. She decided that discretion may be the better part of valour. "Devon is my companion, and Mr Riley was one of my father's advisors. He and Devon's mother came to us after my father was murdered."

Mary snorted again, turning to Chuck. "Does that sound believable to you Sweetie? Does she look stupid enough to hook up with that tool?"

Chuck grinned, but there was no humour in it. "Well, to be fair, Ellie was fooled by him for years, but no, she's lying, she's covering up something. So are Devon and his mother." He turned to the girl. "If you tell the truth, it will go better for you."

She was still certain that their people had the overall situation under control, so she wasn't going to be kowtowed by these people. "Worry about yourself. The shoe will be on the other foot as soon as our men find out what's happening in here."

This time there was a little humour in Chuck's smile. "Are you referring to those twenty dead men outside, or are you thinking of someone else? I think I'll put my money on the hundred Spetsnazovtsi I have out there against whatever you can come up with. Now tell the truth, unless you want the same as your father got!"

He turned to his mother. "Who do you want to start on first Mom?"

"I think I'll take the lady of the house, as you said, she's covering up something and if she is his daughter, it will be interesting to see whether she holds out any better than that bastard who fathered her did."

Vivian was furious, that idiot Riley and his father's mistress had assured her that those agents were the best and that they'd keep them safe, but she had no doubt that what this one had just said was true and these people had wiped out all of them without blinking an eye. It was also obvious that that woman wanted to hurt her, so she'd have to buy time by convincing them that she was willing to play along. "Wait! Wait! I'll tell you! Devon IS my companion, but while he's adequate in that respect, the main reason for keeping him here out of the public eye is that he holds the key that's needed to access my father's information system. I don't know what value that is now though because we can't find the Contessa, my father's yacht, that's where the information is."

Chuck and Mary shared a look. "What to you know about an old lady being tortured and killed a couple of days ago in Somerset?"

"My father used to visit her for some reason, so we thought that she may know where the Contessa was, but she died without telling us anything."

Chuck quickly signalled the Spetsnazovtsi to grab and hold his mother as she lunged at the girl.

Even though he was sickened by the way she'd just shrugged when she said that the woman had died without telling them anything, he had to confirm her value before he could let anything happen to her. "Is the key that the walking sex toy has the only thing that's needed to get into your father's information system?"

Before she had a chance to respond, he added. "The truth! If you say we need something else and we later find that we don't, it will go badly for you!"

"No, it needs me to unlock the biometric controls. Now that my father's gone, I'm the only one who can unlock it!"

Chuck looked at Mary again and she slumped, resigned to the fact that she couldn't end this loathsome creature like she had her father, not yet anyway. That didn't mean she couldn't try to hurt her though. "That woman you killed for nothing? She was your grandmother! Your father's real name was Hartley Winterbottom! Even though he didn't know who he was, he must have had some remnants of his memories of his mother and that was why he was visiting her."

The look Vivian gave her was perplexed, but not horrified or even upset. The idea, let alone the fact, that they'd just tortured her own grandmother to death didn't seem to effect her much, if at all.

Mary shook her head in disgust as she told the men to secure her and ensure that she couldn't escape. The men secured Vivian hand and foot and and carried her into another room, standing guard over her there.

Riley came to at that point, and Chuck didn't even try to stop his mother this time, especially after she told him that this was the one who'd kept whispering in Volkoff's ear and initiated many of the rape sessions forced on her. They dragged him into another room, and Mary started on him.

* * *

While she'd mainly wanted to make the bastard suffer, she did get quite a bit of useful information out of him before he died, and she came back to tell Chuck what he hadn't heard while Riley was screaming it out.

First came the lady of the house. "Volkoff apparently raped her mother when he first arrived in Moscow, but she managed to escape and ran back to England the next day, her flight home had been already booked because her holiday was finished. When he gained more power, he decided that she belonged to him now and had her tracked down, only to find that she'd given birth to a baby girl. Volkoff set her up comfortably in England to raise the baby, but when the girl was seven or eight he suddenly decided that her mother had turned the girl against him and arranged for the mother to be killed in an 'accident'."

Mary hooked a thumb at the room where she'd dealt with Riley and said "Wormtongue was probably behind that, I expect that he was hoping that Volkoff would kill both of them so there wouldn't be an heir to get in the way of his taking over from Volkoff when the time came, but Volkoff must have thought that the girl was recoverable and took over her upbringing."

With that, she went on. "The girl was sent off to boarding schools and finishing schools around England and on the Continent, but she had to be moved all the time because anyone who crossed her tended to have serious 'accidents' and some of them were fatal. She was given training in weapons, martial arts and the other things that the heir to an empire like Volkoff Industries was expected to know about and she went to Moscow for her school holidays to get her initiation into the ways of the family business. About three years ago her father set her up here and put the walking sex toy in her custody. Apparently he wasn't at all pleased to discover that they immediately jumped into a sexual relationship, or that it was far from her first one. That was pretty much the story he gave me on her."

She then turned to look at Devon. "This pig though, I heard more about, it seems that in late ninety four, Volkoff apparently went to his mother…." She looked at Honey Woodcomb musingly, certain that she was missing something there. "And promised her god knows what to get her son to transfer over to UCLA medical school and get Ellie into a relationship with him. Wormtongue said that he was supposed to totally corrupt her so that she would be primed up for what was to come later. Apparently Ellie held out for years before she went into relationship with him when they started at Westside, but Wormtongue said that she'd slept with him before that. Did you know anything about that?"

Chuck shook his head. "No. I know she slept with a few guys other than John, but she didn't give me any details, and I didn't ask. I didn't want to know the in and outs of my sister's sex life, what she told me was bad enough."

Mary nodded. "After they moved in together, apparently Volkoff was happy with the reports he was getting about what this pig was getting Ellie to do with him and others. I'll be having a talk to your sister about what Wormtongue told me about THAT, because what he told me was disgusting!"

Chuck cut in. "Mom, that was probably just this tool trying to impress his mother and Volkoff. I know that his dick measurement has always been bigger than his IQ, but this is Ellie, she wouldn't have gone for that and you know that she could hurt him if he tried to force her."

Mary nodded again, looking a little mollified. "Then, when Ellie kicked him out after what he did at your wedding and left Westside to get away from him, Volkoff called for the pig to be brought to him to answer for the way he'd screwed up Volkoff's plans. Wormtongue told me that he punished him by ripping his eye out, I wouldn't have minded seeing that. From what he told me, I believe that the false eye that he was given must be this key that you're looking for. Apparently his loving mother was more interested in having it off with Volkoff in front of everyone in the office than what was happening to her son, and for the last three years she's been Volkoff's mistress on and off."

She looked at Honey Woodcomb again, still trying to work out what it was about her that was on the tip of her tongue, but she shook her head as she turned back to Devon and said. "Let's get that eye shall we?"

Mary grabbed his head and gouged his left eye out. After she'd ripped it out of his head, she looked at it and then threw it on the floor, saying. "Oh, my mistake!" Then she plucked the false eye out of his right eye socket and stepped back, looking at it.

Chuck looked sick as he watched Devon kneeling on the floor, screaming in pain as he held his hands to his face. Looking at Honey Woodcomb, he was a little shocked to see her looking on with a totally disinterested expression, which didn't change when Chuck pulled out his Glock 20 and put a bullet through Devon's head to shut him up. It was the most humane thing to do. Someone like Devon could never have survived as a blind man, and there was no way his mother was going to let any of these people leave here alive anyway. The only reason that Vivian McArthur was still alive was that they needed her biometrics to get into the system that they'd taken off the Moonyah.

Mary handed the false eye to Chuck and nodded to the men to drag Honey Woodcomb into the room she'd used for Wormtongue. Looking after them, she said musingly. "There's something about her that I should know, but I just can't put my finger on." She stopped and looked at him. "You do know I can't let her leave here alive, don't you?"

Chuck nodded resignedly, he didn't like this business, but if anyone deserved what was happening here, it was these people. Langston Graham may have created the foul creature that was Alexei Volkoff but they'd laid down with it happily, apparently literally in Honey's case, and wallowed in its perversions.

* * *

At first Honey tried to resist her questioning, but she soon found that the terrible stories that she'd heard about the Królowa Mrózu weren't a patch on the reality, and she spilled every detail of her whole story.

When she started talking, Mary kicked herself, because that was what had been nibbling at her consciousness, this was the Honey Badger! She had been the original, the one who set the ground rules for targeted seduction missions back in the sixties. Just about everything that had been taught on seduction since then had been no more than refinements on her practices. No-one had ever matched her record in that field, and from what Wormtongue was saying she still had it. Mary had to admit that from what she was seeing now that she was stripped down to her underwear, she still had an incredible body and beauty for a woman in her late fifties.

Moscow – 1965

Born as Irina Nikolayevna Markoza to workers in Moscow in nineteen fifty two, she learned at quite a young age that she could use the fact that men wanted her to have a far better life than her family could ever give her and she decided to take the life that she was due.

She was recruited at thirteen by the KGB in nineteen sixty five after they arrested her for seducing high ranking party members and manipulating them into giving her whatever she wanted. While she was being interrogated, she all but seduced her interrogator into helping her escape and would have almost certainly been successful if someone else hadn't walked in on them.

Senior KGB officials had been so impressed by how close she had came to succeeding that they offered her a choice, to become a KGB operative or face a firing squad. Needless to say, she became an operative. Her interrogator wasn't offered a choice, he was just shot for failing in his duty.

Already a great beauty at thirteen, Irina's skill sets were all related to seduction and manipulation, but she was unmatched at this, she never failed to seduce any man or woman into submission and always got whatever she was sent for. She was also utterly ruthless, destroying anyone who stood in her way without hesitation. In fact she enjoyed that so much that she went out of her way to manufacture situations where she could do this and that was what earned her the name of the Honey Badger.

By nineteen sixty eight, she had established quite a reputation for herself and the KGB decided that the Honey Badger would be of great value in their fight against the Americans. That was why they inserted her as a deep cover operative in the United States in July of that year when she was sixteen. She was enrolled in Pembroke College in Brown University, as Martha (Honey) Deveraux and her mission was simple, to get her hooks into as many of the powerful American families as she could by controlling their sons.

In her time at Pembroke, or rather Brown as it was by the time she finished, Honey hardly ever slept in her own bed, as she was always in someone else's, and if it was only three or four someone elses on a given week, well that was a slow week for her. She managed to convince every one of them to keep what they'd done a secret because she'd never done anything like this before and she'd be ruined if anyone ever found out about it. Her hold over them was so strong that even the ones who couldn't resist boasting about it never said that it was her.

By the time she finished at Brown, Honey had determined that the Woodcomb family was the best connected of all the ones that she had come into contact with. Therefore, while she would not be stopping her activities with any others who were useful to her, she would be best served to become a part of that family. With that, she went to Woodrow Woodcomb the third just before they graduated in tears, telling him that she was in trouble because she was pregnant and she carrying his baby.

The Woodcombs hastily organised their son's wedding with the minimum of ceremony required to meet the standards for their position in society and had them married. When she was due to start showing, Honey went to Woody in tears again and told him that she'd done her best, she'd rushed to the doctor as soon as she started having those terrible pains, but she'd still lost their baby. Of course she'd lost the baby, she'd gotten rid of it as soon as she found out about it, just like the other dozen inconvenient pregnancies she'd had while she'd been in America.

Even if she'd been ready to have a baby, which she wasn't, she couldn't afford to take the risk that the baby would have been a half caste. She'd been tasked with working members of the Black Panthers as a side mission, to enlist them to the cause and use them as an activist group against America. Needless to say, she'd been using the methods she was best at to do that.

There had never been any question of whether she'd succeed in her task, because the Honey Badger never failed, and State soon had the Black Panthers blowing things up across America for them. At least screwing those big black bucks had been satisfying for her, which was more than she could say for screwing Woodcomb and the rest of his inadequate ilk.

By the mid-seventies, Woodcomb was making noises about what he was hearing about her activities, so she had to give in and bear him a child to prevent him from divorcing her. There was no question that the child she bore was in fact a Woodcomb, because Devon soon proved to be exceedingly stupid and irritating, but at least he got some of his looks from her. She forced herself to give Woodcomb two more children over the next few years to solidify her position, as the scandal that would come from him trying to throw her out after she'd borne him three sons would harm his family's name just as much as it would her.

Honey made sure that she threw Woody a few bones every now and then, sending stupid young girls his way to sleep with him. Of course she never did anything without a plan, and this gave her something to hold over him, as those girls were mostly under age and/or from families who were powerful enough to destroy him.

Having to give in to the irritating necessity of bearing his children didn't keep her down for long though, because by the mid eighties Woodcomb's sons were all in school and she was back to where she was working powerful and up and coming men for information and favours all the time. The Honey Badger was the most successful operative that the State had operating in America through that period.

At the end ninety one, Honey was contacted by her KGB superiors to advise her that the KGB was being dismantled. They also wanted to assure her that the fall of the Soviet Union would not be enough to make them forget their best operative, and while they may be out of contact for a month or two, they would contact her again as soon as the new SVU organisation was operational.

While they had the opportunity to talk to her, they reminded her about her orders to groom her sons to join her in her work, and asked what progress she had made on this front. Honey had to hedge around that question, because at fifteen Devon, her eldest, was useless for anything but getting in trouble with girls, though he was good at that (at least he got something from her). The two younger boys weren't showing much promise either, and she was beginning to think that she should have found better fathers for them.

With a bit of care in selecting the right men to sleep with, she could have had children who looked the part but actually had enough sense to be useful, why hadn't she thought of that? She shrugged at that as it was too late now and she certainly wasn't having any more children! She had thought that her own intelligence would have overcome the Woodcomb stupidity, but apparently they were correct when they said 'you can't fix stupid', and it seemed that you couldn't beat it either!

She did what she could and attempted to mould Devon into something that could be useful, but it was like beating her head against a brick wall. What was the most aggravating was the knowledge that she'd already been an effective KGB operative, one of if not the best at what she did, for two years by the time she was his age, but she couldn't rely on him to do anything.

Hartford Connecticut – November 1994

Three years later, Honey had a visit from someone who she never expected to see. Even buried in deep cover in America as she'd been for nearly thirty years, she'd heard of Alexei Volkoff. The thought of dealing with someone as powerful and ruthless as Alexei Volkoff excited Honey, and he set her loins afire like none of these weak Americans could.

Alexei had come to her with a proposal, he was aware that her eldest son was already struggling at Brown's Alpert Medical School. What he wanted her to do was get him to transfer across to UCLA's Medical School in Los Angeles and have him do whatever he had to to cultivate a relationship with a student there by the name of Eleanor Bartowski. In return he would arrange for whatever tutoring Devon needed to keep him from failing once he was at UCLA.

Honey added at that point that Alexei had later told her about how he'd seen the newspaper articles about Ellie being valedictorian and getting a full scholarship to study medicine at UCLA. He'd also said that he'd recognised her from both her resemblance to her mother and her picture in the file that he'd been given on Mary's family. That was how he'd found her.

What Volkoff offered to pay her to get her to do this was significant even to someone used to dealing in circles like the Woodcombs', and he'd also offered favours such as only a man of his wealth and power could deliver. Honey had no compunctions about telling her that the screwing he gave her when she asked for it was impressive, both in the acts he performed and the number of times he did it, especially for a man of his age. She said that by the time that Volkoff had left, promising that they would be together when Devon came through for them, she was already planning how to ensure that Alexei got what he wanted.

It hadn't been too difficult for her to convince Woody that the best thing for the family would be to get Devon transferred across to UCLA BEFORE he managed to flunk out of Alpert Medical School in his first year. She knew she'd won when she saw his reaction when she made the point about how embarrassing it would be for the family if everyone saw just how much of a failure he was, and added that at least if he flunked at UCLA, it wouldn't be in front of everyone they knew.

Her son had tried to argue against leaving his friends and everyone at Alpert Medical School until she told him point blank that his two choices were to transfer to UCLA now or stay at Alpert, and WHEN he inevitably failed at Alpert they would cut him off without a cent to his name. He would also be banished from the family, never to return.

She took him aside and quietly told him that she had a friend that would pay for him to have as much tutoring as it took to get through over there, he just had to do something for him, cultivate a relationship with a girl called Eleanor Bartowski. She snorted as she said that even her idiot son had been able to see that it was in his best interests to go along with this, so he'd agreed.

Devon duly transferred to UCLA, and the tutors that Volkoff found for him had managed to keep his grades up just enough to stop him flunking out, but he wasn't managing to sweep Ellie Bartowski off her feet the way his mother expected him to, because she had a single minded focus on her studies.

Devon had learned a little from his mother, and he used that to keep engineering meetings with Ellie wherever he could. Honey knew that this was because he was afraid of what she would do to him if he failed, but he never realised that he was actually being watched. It was only the way he kept setting up those encounters with Ellie and the fact that the observers reported that she didn't seem to be immune to his charms that had saved Devon from Alexei Volkoff's wrath.

It took him four years to initiate any sort of sexual intimacy with her, but even with the extensive instruction on that front that his mother had arranged for him, that remained very intermittent until Ellie started her residency at the Westside Medical Centre and they arranged to get him in there as well. That was where they struck up a serious relationship, and soon after that he moved in with her. Honey was pleased to FINALLY be able to tell Alexei that her son had delivered. The reports of their activities that he sent through kept Alexei happy for several years after that.

Repeated pointed reminders from his mother of what failure would mean to him kept Devon on the straight and narrow up until Chuck and Sarah's wedding at the end of 2007, where he screwed up in a big way. A month later, he'd been kicked out of her apartment and a couple of months after that Ellie left Westside Medical Centre to get away from him. Soon after Ellie left and he'd gotten into trouble with the Medical Centre for his part in her leaving, Alexei demanded that he be brought to him to account for his actions. Honey was furious that her son had screwed everything up so badly, so she ordered him to come home immediately.

Hartford Connecticut - 1st April 2008

When he arrived home, Devon tried to ask why his father and brothers weren't there, but he didn't get any answers, because the two rather large goons that Alexei had sent to collect him just grabbed him and bundled him into an SUV. Honey sat in the front and tried to ignore his attempts to ask her questions, until she got annoyed and looked at one of the men. The blow to the gut that Devon received at that left him doubled up for a while. He stayed quiet after that.

He had learned his lesson, because when he was dragged out of the SUV and opened his mouth to ask what was going on when he saw the business jet, he just shut it when he saw the look he got from his mother.

When they landed in Moscow and were taken to Volkoff Industries' citadel, Honey decided to rub the consequences of his failure in her son's face. Devon was duly shocked when they were led into Volkoff's office and his mother ran up to joyously jump on Alexei, and in less than five minutes he had her on the desk with her skirts pushed up around her waist and her blouse open as he kissed her breasts. She didn't care that all these men were watching her roll about on Alexei's desk on the verge of having sex in little more than her underwear.

One time she threw her head back in rapture from what he was doing to her though, she opened her eyes and saw her son with a stupid expression on his face, at that her expression abruptly changed to disgust and she reminded Alexei (in Russian) about what they were here for. His own happy expression turned to anger as well at that, and he stepped back, straightening out his clothes as he moved around the desk.

Honey unhurriedly smoothed down her skirt as she got off the desk and stepped into her shoes, but she pulled her blouse back to show off what she had and have one of the men a come hither look when he looked interested in what he was seeing. She blew him a kiss with a smile and started unhurriedly buttoning her blouse as she came around the desk to where Alexei was standing in front of her son.

Volkoff was speaking. "Devon, may I call you Devon? You don't know me, but I am Alexei Volkoff, and I am the one who's been paying for you ever since you transferred over to UCLA."

Volkoff drew a breath before he continued. "Now I must admit to being rather vexed that it took you so long to land Miss Bartowski, after all, your mother here never took more than a couple of days to achieve her objective. Most of the time she had it done in a day and was on her way with whatever she came for with plenty of time to spare. But then, the Honey Badger always was the standard that all others tried to emulate." He smiled fondly at her and reached out to squeeze her arse, and Honey leant in to kiss him passionately. Then he went on as if nothing had happened.

"While you were a slow starter though, I was happy when your mother reported that you'd finally landed the prize and moved in with her. I was also pleased with the reports you were sending in as it sounded as though you were preparing Miss Bartowski just the way I wanted. Now I was given to understand that you were aware that what was required of you to repay the millions of dollars that I have invested in you was that you kept Miss Bartowski happy and ensure that she stayed where we could get to her until I was ready to use her for what I intended. Was I incorrect in that understanding?"

Devon gulped. "N. No Mr Volkoff."

"Then can you explain…." He put his hand out and one of the men ran to his desk and grabbed the paperwork there to bring it back to him. Volkoff started reading from the statement that was in Ellie's resignation letter to Westside Medical. 'At my brother's wedding, my partner Devon Woodcomb kissed my new sister in law quite inappropriately and then proceeded to handle her inappropriately as he suggested that he'd much rather give her an Australian Kiss, going on to explain that that was like a French Kiss but down under. My sister in law slapped him for that, and both my brother and mother had to be restrained from doing him physical harm, as did a number of other members of our extended family. When we returned home, we had an altercation about what he had done, where he denied he'd done any of the things that we all saw and heard him do. I couldn't bear to be anywhere near him at that point, so I packed a bag and went off to stay with some friends for a few weeks. When I returned, he still denied doing anything, so I tried to put it behind me as an inappropriate drunken incident, even though he hadn't appeared to be drunk, until some of the other women in our apartment complex told me how he'd been pushing for them to sleep him while I was away, and he had kept pushing for it whenever I wasn't there after I returned. I evicted him from my apartment then, with the support of some of the other people living in the apartment complex, and my brother after they called to let him know what was going on. Since then, Devon Woodcomb and his friends working here have persisted in spreading scandalous and disgusting malicious rumours about myself, my sister in law and my brother around the hospital and the stress from this has escalated to the point where I no longer believe that I can operate effectively in this environment any more.'

"Explain to me how you could believe that ANY of this was not the complete opposite of your duty to keep Miss Bartowski happy and on a short leash so I could get to her when I wanted to? First you inappropriately kiss and handle her sister in law and proposition her AT HER OWN WEDDING. Then when you have two chances to make amends with Miss Bartowski, you argue with her and refuse to admit anything happened. You try to proposition other women living in the same apartment complex while she's living there with you as your girlfriend, and finally you ensure that there is no possible chance of reconciliation by spreading malicious rumours about her and her family at the place where both of you are working. If I didn't know better Devon, I'd think that you were deliberately trying to sabotage everything to ensure that you don't have to deliver on your part of the bargain when you finally got into the position where you could, but you wouldn't do that, would you?"

"No Mister Volkoff!"

Volkoff sighed in frustration. "The fact remains that you have destroyed any hope of delivering on the one thing that I've been paying your bills for the last fourteen years for. I really want to shoot you for what you've done to me at the moment Devon, but that would waste all of the time and money I've invested in you, and I do not like wasting money, much less my valuable time. This means that I will have to find some other way for you to be of use to me."

He nodded to the men behind Devon and they grabbed him so that he was immobilised. Volkoff went on then. "I must admit, I am going to enjoy this part, because as well as preparing for what we need, this will serve as part of your punishment for wilfully screwing up what I invested so much time and money into. You see you have lost me the best way to implement my retribution against her. I was getting very close to being able to take my revenge on that woman and you have ruined it!"

With that, he grabbed Devon's head with his left hand and stuck two fingers into his right eye, gouging out his eyeball. When the eyeball was free of the eye socket, he closed his fist over it and ripped the optic nerve out as well.

Volkoff dropped the eyeball on the floor and pulled out an handkerchief to wipe his hand clean, telling the men to take Devon to the infirmary as he reached for Honey because his screaming was giving him a headache. The last thing Devon saw as he was hustled out of the room was his mother and Volkoff locked in a passionate embrace.

There was absolutely no emotion as Honey described how Alexei ripped Devon's eye out with his bare hands, or how it took two weeks of treatment before he could accept the false eye that had been made to contain the device that Alexei was so worried about. The story went on in the same tone.

Alexei called Vivian out of school, and when she arrived in Moscow, they flew to St Petersburg. Alexei had to get Vivian set up on his information system and give her instructions about what she was to do with Devon, and he brought me along to cheer himself up.

In St Petersburg, Devon and I were blindfolded when we were taken down to the docks and aboard a ship. The blindfolds weren't taken off until we were inside the ship, and his Spetsnazovtsi were always there to make sure that we didn't look at anything we weren't supposed to. Alexei took the false eye from Devon and he and Vivian went off to do something. They came back half an hour later and he told Devon to put the eye in, then we were blindfolded and taken back to the plane to fly back to Moscow.

Alexei and Vivian were having an argument on the flight back about the fact that he was taking her out of school and setting her up on an estate to watch Devon. He looked at us and quietly told her that this was critical to everything that they were doing and she had to do this. He tried to placate her by telling her not to worry about finishing the school year as he'd make sure that the records showed that she passed with flying colours.

When we were back in Moscow, he sent Vivian and Devon off to England with Riley to get them set up here, and I spent another week there with him before he sent me home to America.

For the last three years, Alexei would bring me to Moscow for a week or so every two or three months until you killed him. Riley turned up in Connecticut a week later to tell me that he was dead and asked me what I knew about where he kept the information that he used to control the people he worked with. I told him that Devon was part of it and convinced him that he needed me to get Devon to cooperate, but I didn't know where Alexei had been hiding him. That was the part that Riley knew, so we flew to England.

For some reason Vivian didn't want Devon killed so she told Riley that both of them were needed to access the information, and that they needed to find the Contessa. We were trying to find the ship when you got here.

She went quiet when she finished the story and Mary just looked at her for a while before asking. "Why did Volkoff go after my daughter and what was he planning on doing to her?"

Honey laughed "Why? You know why, you betrayed him. He trusted you, told you secrets that he didn't tell anyone else and then you left him. He never stopped looking for you or your family from that day on and when he found your daughter he knew that he had the perfect vehicle for retribution. Devon was supposed to soften her up while Alexei looked for you so that when he found you he could make you watch as he and everyone else turned her inside out, only when he was sure that you were totally broken would he let the two of you die. Unfortunately we never caught on that my son was lying and he never had the control over her that he said he had though, otherwise Alexei would have grabbed her earlier and taken over the job of softening her up himself, though he probably would have given her to the men as well, in hope that it worked better on her than it did on you."

Mary stared at her. "You would have helped him, wouldn't you?"

Honey laughed again "Of course, that was all she was good for! She was of no value for anything but that, and it would have given Alexei enjoyment….."

Her words were cut off as Mary slashed her throat. Mary waited until she stopped gurgling before she turned off the recorder, picked it up and walked out of the room.

* * *

Looking around the room, she asked. "What evidence have we left here?"

Chuck pointed at Devon and said. "Just the bullet I finished him with."

The look in her eye when she looked at the Spetsnazovtsi and said. "Find it!" Had them scrabbling to comply and they'd dug it out of the panelling within five minutes, holding up the bag to show that they had it.

She nodded and told the Spetsnazovtsi in the room with her to blindfold Vivian and bring her out as they were leaving.

Chuck questioned leaving this many bodies around, especially with two of them tortured, but she just pointed to Vivian and said that she was the only one associated with this place and there was no connection to them.

He could see that there was no reasoning with her at this point, so he nodded to the men to do as she said. Before they left, she handed him the recorder that she'd used for both sessions and told him to listen to it on the flight home, that would explain everything.

They'd all left England within an hour, and Chuck was as enraged as she was by the time he finished listening to the recordings. Vivian tried to say that it was her father who'd been doing those things, not her, but she realised that the safest thing would be to stay quiet. She tried to hide whenever either of them looked her way after that as she could see death in their eyes.

They had recorded her reactions as she listened to Riley telling how her father had raped and then killed her mother and she showed no more reaction than she had when they told her that she'd been part of torturing her own grandmother to death. Her indifferent shrugs as she listened to Riley's stories about her and Honey's final comments about what her father had planned for Ellie was the final proof. The nature versus nurture theories for psychopaths and sociopaths may be accepted by the 'experts', but whatever the reason, there was no question that this one was just as much of a psychopath as her father had been.

* * *

In Los Angeles, when they got back to the Castle they went straight to the Dungeon and told everyone to get out. One look at their faces was enough to ensure compliance. Chuck fired up the information system and placed the false eye in the docking device, telling Vivian to unlock the computer. She tried to refuse, saying that she wouldn't do anything until they guaranteed her safety, but he looked her in the eye and told her that she could do it voluntarily or his mother would kill her and they'd chop the parts they needed for the biometrics off of her body. She unlocked the system when a glance at Mary confirmed that she was just waiting to do what Chuck had said. She was then dragged away while Chuck set up his biometrics in the system. He confirmed via several different processes that he had full access to the system.

Chuck never heard, or asked, what happened to Vivian when she disappeared while he was working on the system. It was a given that she was dead, he hoped that it had been quick and clean even though she didn't deserve that. He did know that she was too dangerous to release back into society, her shrug when Riley's stories about the 'accidents' that had happened to anyone who crossed her were played had confirmed that.

Chuck got into the SVU's systems and extracted all the reports that the Honey Badger had submitted since they started in nineteen ninety two. When he told Auntie Di what was in them so that she could present it to the President, she was shocked by the level of intelligence that the Honey Badger had been supplying, and the names of many of the men she had been working, right up to the end.

She asked whether he had any information that she could share with the British about that massacre that had occurred on an estate north of London and shuddered at his emotionless expression as he said "Vivian McArthur is a psychopath, just like her father Alexei Volkoff, my understanding is that that estate was Miss McArthur's residence. I presume that her father must have gone to her after he escaped the operation in Moscow, possibly with his advisor Mister Riley and his mistress, Missus Woodcomb. His mistress apparently took her son with her. Volkoff or McArthur must have had the notion that Riley and the Woodcombs had betrayed them and tortured them to find out what they did. After that they apparently had the guards killed to cover their escape and disappeared."

Diane started to say "Honey…." But he cut her off. "No, I can't handle this at the moment. I'll send through the files on the Honey Badger." With that he cut the link.

 **A/N: Maybe I should have called this one 'Psycho Chicken'? I originally only planned on Volkoff being a psycho and Honey and Vivian being a slut and bitch respectively, but as it developed they all became psychopaths. At least Devon just stayed as a sleazy idiot. I know Mary got extremely violent in this, but with the circumstances that wasn't entirely out of line I think. Didn't like killing off Hartley's Mum, as I liked her, but there wasn't another solution that fit into the way it was playing out once we went with Psycho, Psycho and Psycho.**


	21. Bad Omen

**OK, it looks as though the psycho chickens didn't bother people as much as I expected. Gotta say, that was a bit of a surprise ;^) Anyway, it tidied up all of the Volkoff/Winterbottom/McArthur issues and they've got access to the Hydra information. On top of that, the only real trace left of the Woodcombs is Woody and I can either ignore him or have him charged with treason as well as aiding and abetting an enemy of the state, so it's all good in my world ;^)**

 **This one's mostly fluffy, we have a few more babies born in this chapter, Robin** ** ** **and**** ******Louie** become parents (OK, I realised that with most of our ladies getting pregnant, I had a shortfall of guys big and old enough to suit them, so I went back and added Sofia's bodyguard as Louis Chekov to the Shadow Security team, the Hulk rides again ;^), and Sarah generously offered Chuck's stud services to two other couples who had problems with having children.**

 **I also realised that I wasn't clear on the couples we have. Chuck and Sarah, Casey and Ellie, Carina and Leslie, Zondra and Vinnie, Mary and Stephen, Gertrude and Marco, Anna and Dasha, Mei Ling and Javier, Sydney and Lynn, Yuri and Rob and Mike and Zoe are out there, but we have others. As noted, we also have** ** **Robin** ** ** **and**** ******Louie**** , Jeff and Ilsa, Skip and Alex (Forrest), and Rick and Vicky. Emma has a man, one of the other analyst/controllers from Fox Consulting, but they didn't feel any need to get married at their age and Alex (McHugh) is dating Pete from the tech team but she wants a career to live up to her father's image. Hope that clears things up a little ;^)**

 ** **Usual disclaimers, no rights to any characters portrayed, this isn't the real world and it's not a Disney Princess story.****

Pasadena – May 2011

The Special Projects Team were, of course, heavily involved in following up the matters that related to what Honey Woodcomb told Mary under interrogation and any files relating to the Honey Badger's activities in the United States. The first priority was, of course, the highly placed government officials who had been leaking information to the SVU via the Honey Badger, knowingly or otherwise, for the past nineteen years.

The ones who currently held positions of power, and/or had access to any sensitive information were dealt with first, in an attempt to eliminate the threats that they represented. Once that had been addressed, they processed all of the others who had leaked the most sensitive information to the Russians or Soviets through the Honey Badger in the nearly forty three years that she had been operating in America.

The first called to answer for their actions in the second group were Woodrow Woodcomb the Third and his surviving sons. Documentation had been discovered to confirm Honey's statements that Woody had been aware of her activities and assisting her by gathering information and getting her introductions to the people she wanted to engage for over twenty five years. Their surviving sons had been involved in this for nearly fifteen years as well.

Needless to say, things were not looking good for the Woodcomb family. With their proven involvement in espionage against the United States for over a quarter of a century, anyone involved in the government, military, intelligence or sensitive industries was banned from having any contact with Woody and his sons whatsoever. The family separated them from any of the family businesses in an attempt to contain the damage to the rest of the family, but the stigma and outrage associated with what they and Honey had done was enough to ensure the entire Woodcomb family's complete economic and social downfall from the position that the family had used to rule the roost over the ultra conservative upper class circles for well over half a century.

* * *

Chuck had been right about what was on the Hydra system, as they came to call it, ALL of Volkoff's big secrets had been kept in that system. It held the information about everyone he associated with, had bought or blackmailed, and what he'd used to control people and governments around the world. That was far from everything hidden away in that system either, for that matter.

The nature of their relationships with Volkoff and their activities determined what was done about the people who were dealing with him. Those who were relatively innocent but had been being blackmailed by Volkoff into doing his bidding were privately told that Volkoff was gone and that their secrets were safe. Most of those involved then started working with the Special Projects team or the local organisations who had passed on these glad tidings.

The next group were less benign, but there were benefits in having them work with them, rather than against them for the 'good guys'. The information that was being held over this group was used to make them do the right thing, rather than what they'd been doing for Volkoff.

The remainder were dirty but unimportant or what was being used to blackmail them was so bad that it couldn't be let slide. For this group, the information from the Hydra system was used to take them down.

There was so much hidden in the Hydra system that it was January in 2012 before most of it had been unearthed and they'd initiated dealings with the people concerned.

Pasadena - January 2012

Between the Honey Badger's activities and the Hydra information, there was a purge throughout the world's government, military, intelligence circles to a level that had never been seen before. The clean up activities were more aggressive in the United States than they were anywhere else. Some politicians tried to sweep it under the carpet, but the President defeated their attempts by going public with an address to the nation on the matter. Needless to say, this didn't make him at all popular with anyone else in politics, not even his own party, but it did have the desired effect. The people's strident demands to see the corruption be purged from the government circles and the massive spike in the President's personal approval ratings ensured that no-one would stop them cleaning out the corruption they'd found.

* * *

The Special project Group's involvement in unearthing the information and oversight of the clean-up process for the military and intelligence sectors led to their senior officers all being pushed up at least one a grade in an effort to ensure that they had the authority to progress what needed to be progressed in 2012. Chuck became a full Admiral, Sarah and Casey became Lieutenant Generals, Ellie a Vice Admiral and Emma and Mary became Major Generals. Anna became a Rear Admiral Lower Half and Carina, Zondra and Dasha all became Brigadier Generals. This in turn led to some promotions and moves among their aide de camps and an extra eight aides.

Mei Ling was promoted to a Major and Zoe was promoted to a Captain. Ilsa transferred from Sarah to Mary as a Captain, Alex (McHugh) and Sofia transferred to Anna and Carina respectively as Lieutenants. Chuck added Jeff as a Commander to his aides, while Sarah and Casey added Gertrude and Mike respectively as Majors, Ellie, Emma and Casey added Javier, Sydney and Robin respectively as Captains and another two lieutenants were added for Zondra and Dasha.

* * *

While all of this had been going on, their children been developing at varying rates, from Sofia's Yani who was a normal fifteen month old baby girl, to Sarah and Chuck's little terrors who had been walking (or more to the point running), speaking several languages fairly well and were fully potty trained before they were twelve months old. Lottie, Charlie, Sammie, Clara and three or four of the others could certainly talk, in fact they were chatterboxes who hardly ever shut up unless they were in the meetings with the 'nasty men'.

While the big brass that Chuck, Sarah, Ellie and the others were usually dealing with had learned not to say anything about these people bringing their 'damned children' into their meetings, most of them didn't like it in the least. As a result of this, many of them usually spent most of the meetings glowering at the upstarts and their 'damned children'.

Sarah and Casey were quite quick to point the finger at their spouses for their children's verbosity and Chuck and Ellie took it on the chin, because they just had to look at 'Grandpa Stephen' to see where it came from. Of course the others couldn't do that, so they just stuck with the story that they'd learned it from Chuck's children.

Emma, Mary and Ellie were having a fine old time watching Sarah trying to deal with her children, in particular Lottie, because she was her mother's 'mini me'. It was just like watching Samanta when she was that age. If they didn't hear 'Charlotte Mary Carmichael!' all but shouted at least once a day, they checked to see what was going on. Charlie and Sammie didn't go head to head with their mother anywhere near as much, and Sammie was her favourite because he was so like his father. Of course, it was the fact that Lottie was so like Sarah that made her Chuck's favourite.

Ellie couldn't talk though, because Clara was just as much like her as Lottie was like Sarah, so she got 'Clara Johanna Coburn!' from Ellie almost as often, something that Mary and Stephen had quite a bit of fun reminding her about, as they hadn't forgotten her at that age, especially Mary. Mary and Stephen just loved having seven grandchildren to dote over though, and Emma, Diane and Roan were just as happy with their grandchildren. Mary and Emma had been champing at the bit to start the kids' training like they had with Ellie, Charlie and Samantha from the day they were born. While they were mainly thinking about their grandchildren, all of the new generation would be included.

The children still spent most of their time in their parents' offices, and a good deal of that time sitting in their parents' laps as they worked, especially Lottie, Charlie and Sammie, because Sarah and Chuck felt as much need to be with them as their children did. When Sarah and Chuck started putting the girls and Sammie in toddler versions of their respective service uniforms, they looked so adorable that Ellie and other mothers quickly followed suit. Mind you, only three quarters of the children qualified as 'toddlers', as the others weren't walking yet.

They'd had another four children added to the next generation since the first ones were born. Robin and Louie had a baby about six months after the others, and Sarah had a moment of weakness and love when she was watching Anna and Dasha dote over Sammie and the twins wistfully. She brought them to tears when she asked them if they'd like to have children of their own, so before she could change her mind she got Chuck's unspoken agreement and told them that the two of them could have one night with Chuck.

If it didn't take with either of them on the night, she said that they could try again with artificial means if they wanted. The artificial means offer was also extended to Sydney and Lynn, as they'd had similar wistful looks when holding the babies and Sydney had always said that Chuck was the best man she knew, but a one time only of offer of sex with her husband to his best friend and her partner was as far as she was willing to go on THAT front.

Anna and Dasha didn't need to take up the artificial option as they both became pregnant on the night that Sarah gave them, but Lynn gratefully took Sarah up on the offer. Carla Daria Wu and Philip Ivan Rodya were born about a year after their older half sisters and brother and Sydney Lynn Mason was born a couple of months later. From the early indicators, it looked as though the three boys (Sam, Phil and Syd) would all look very similar. Being Eurasian, Carla was the one who stood out among Chuck's children.

* * *

Stephen and Leslie's 'other children' had also been growing, in numbers anyway. They now had three cargo and three tanker VTHs, a dozen VTMs and two dozen VTLs. They had also come up with another aircraft platform and there were already a few of those flying as well.

Once Volkoff had been taken down, Stephen and Leslie had time to think about what the teams had been saying about the issues they'd had hitting sites in Europe and Eastern Europe. They decided from what they were hearing that there was a serious gap in the group's transport options. The HyperNova could carry thirty odd people plus a couple of vehicles the way it was normally configured and it cruised at Mach 5, but it couldn't carry enough to move a full team and the fact that it needed a full sized airport to take off or land when loaded up made it difficult to operate under the radar.

On the other hand, their VTOL/STOL aircraft could land and take off just about anywhere and could carry up to the capacity of a C5 Galaxy if necessary (as STOL). The flip side of that was that while their max cruise speed of around Mach 1 was impressive by most standards, it tended to make flights to the other side of the world long and tiresome. With their new responsibilities, the European and Eastern European stations that they'd opened when they were going after the Ring and Volkoff Industries and their new mobile base on the Moonyah, they were having to do that type of flight all too often now and that was made Stephen and Leslie think about this.

Once they sat down to think about this, Heckle and Jeckle (as they were affectionately known) didn't take long to come up with a supersonic variant of their VTOL/STOL transport designs. The initial UAV flight prototype for the VST was the length of one of the VTLs, but with a much more slender and streamlined fuselage. Using the same engines, plasma emitters and the like as the VTLs did, it could land and take off anywhere, but it could cruise at Mach 2.5.

The success of that prototype excited them enough to leap into building the VSTM airframe before they'd even finished updating the designs. The VST Medium was the same length as the VTM, but with the more slender design it'd only carry maybe thirty people. Still, carrying thirty people at Mach 2.5 and being able to land just about anywhere was nothing to be sneezed at!

They also went straight into the designs for the VST Heavy. This design was three times the length of the VTM and had about the same capacity as a DC-8-73. They could cruise at Mach 2.5 with the VTH's engines and plasma emitters, and like the VTHs, they could land on the Moonyah if you cleared enough room on the helicopter deck for them (the VTMs had no trouble, so neither would the VSTMs).

The team couldn't wait to see the VSTH aircraft operational, as they would make it possible to move large operational teams around much faster than anyone else. With the Spetsnaz Otriad from the Moonyah and other Special Operations people they had on the team, the forces that they could deploy that way would be quite formidable.

As soon as the first VSTM was properly operational, that became their primary transport vehicle, as everyone working in the Special Projects offices on level one was being required to attend meetings in D.C. at least once a week. It was even more frequent for Chuck, Sarah and Ellie, and the return trip generally took up a whole day with the meeting in the VTs. With the VSTs that was reduced to half a day, which gave them time to do other things.

They'd had the VST prototype re-purposed as an in-line three seat aircraft and started using that for their trips while the construction of the VSTM was under way. Chuck and Casey were most often the ones using it, because it wasn't the best for the babies. They'd also been using Sonic (as the HN prototype had been called when it was re-purposed into an in-line three seater because Leslie had put Sonic the Hedgehog images on the outsides of the two vertical tail surfaces) for the same purpose, but while it was twice as fast, they had to get to and from a suitable airstrip at each end of the flight, so the trip hadn't been that much quicker than the VST and they 'retired' Sonic to the island when the VST was available.

* * *

There were always some of the men that they dealt with who didn't approve of Sarah, Chuck and Ellie bringing their babies, and then toddlers into important meetings with them. Carina, Zondra, Emma, Mary and Casey got the same reaction when they were there and looking after the kids too. One of the problems that those people had was the President, Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Of Staff, National Security Advisor and DNI all regarded these parents to be essential for the matters at hand, and regarded the kids being present to have them there as being an acceptable trade off. The other big problem they had was the fact that their usual reason for arguing against the Special Projects Group's inclusion was that they had something to hide.

As a result of that, any complainers were told that these people were more important than they were, and the standard operating procedure was that the powers that be would call for them to be investigated to see what skeletons they had in their closets. The usual outcome of those investigations was that they'd be found to be associated with the Honey Badger or Volkoff lists, if not both. When that happened, they were relieved of their rank and positions, and it wasn't that unusual for them to be incarcerated in black sites as well.

Even those few who no evidence was found against tended to find themselves excluded from the meetings, and were often relieved of positions involved with dealing with sensitive issues as well. When this happened, at the very least they lost any real hope of advancement, and their careers were effectively over.

At least with the VSTMs, their frequent trips to Washington were a lot easier, as it meant that they could spend half of the day in L.A. and half of the day in D.C. which made for a much more workable arrangement. They could also work on the flight to and from Washington, which helped keep up with their workloads.

They tended to be in uniform at least half the time, and the sight of a three or four star Admiral or two or three star General with a baby or toddler on their hip heading into a meeting with the big brass never seemed to grow old for most folk. While some were shocked or disapproving, most generally thought that it was adorable, especially when it was Sarah or Ellie who were carrying the kids. It was amusing to the others to watch how Sarah made most of the girls she caught them fawning over Chuck and whichever of their kids he was carrying (normally the girls) just about wet themselves though.

Washington – March 2012

For all they were tied up with this, Jane Bentley came back to them with an assignment that was similar to others that they'd received in the past, as she knew that the core issue was legitimate, but overall it stank of a setup to her, and to the rest of them as well.

If a fraction of what they were hearing about this Omen Virus was true, they could be looking at a Cyber Pandemic here, so they couldn't afford to ignore it. However, the fact that it was people that they didn't know who were insisting that the Intersect team were the only ones who could handle a problem this size said that they most probably had some sort of plan here and that they believed that they had a way to pin this on the intersect team.

Chuck and the rest of the family were quite aware that even if they'd cleaned up ninety nine percent of the Fulcrum/Ring/Volkoff players and they had Volkoff's Hydra database, there were still more than a few out there. It was almost certain that some of those who survived would be among the other side's 'best and brightest', because they were the ones who'd be the most likely to be able to cover their tracks and evade capture. In and of itself, that confirmed the nature of the threat that would be out there, and this just served to validate the fact that there'd be traps laid for them.

The problem that they had been brought in for was a new virus that those on listening details had been hearing chatter about, the Omen virus. Seeing Chuck and Anna go pale when they were told that it was capable of erasing a hundred zetabytes of data per second gave the others the idea that it was serious, but it was only when Chuck put it in layman's terms and explained that that meant that it could theoretically wipe out every database in the world in about five seconds that they grasped just how serious it was.

They assigned top priority to investigating the virus and where it came from, but they also started investigating this Clyde Decker and Nicholas Quinn, as they had been the front men for this exercise. It took them a week and a half to locate and acquire code that was part of the virus, and Jeff started pulling it apart. They had a minor win at that point as Jeff managed to find tags that allowed him to identify the one who appeared to be the designer, or the primary designer at least.

Jeff also identified the fact that the Omen virus was at least a two part mechanism, so two or more parts needed to be brought together for it to be launched. They thanked the gods that few of them believed in for that last gift, because that almost certainly meant that the parts were being kept separate until the other side was ready to release it.

Now that they had a name, Colin Davis, the search went a lot quicker, and they tracked him to some commune out in the back blocks of Massachusetts. The fact that he'd stayed close to home made sense actually, as Davis had been a bright young star at MIT in his younger days, and the farthest he ever appeared to have strayed was New York.

When they brought up the satellite imagery of the commune, at first they laughed, because it appeared to be a nudist colony, but their laugher dried up quickly as they started taking in the fences, the security systems and cameras, and the large numbers of well armed paramilitary 'guards'. This was no latter day hippy commune, it was a serious operation.

The arguments about who should be going into the compound were cut off by a piercing whistle from Sydney. "Look, I'm the only woman in the right age group who can look after herself and doesn't have a baby, so that makes me half of the incursion team, now who do we need to go in with me?"

They all knew what Chuck was going to say when he looked at Sarah, and furthermore they knew that he was right, he was the only one who had a chance of getting through to Davis and talking him out, and he was more capable of looking after himself than anyone else. Sarah didn't wait for him to try and explain himself, she'd already put everything together in that brilliant head of her's and was forced to accept that the logic was irrefutable, so she just choked out "Alright!" and grabbed up Sammie, hugging him to her as she swept out of the room in tears.

Chuck spat out "Start planning!" as he grabbed the girls and then ran after Sarah. It was a surprise when it was Charlie, rather than Lottie, who asked "Why was Mama crying Papa?" while they were waiting for the lift to come back down. Chuck kissed her on the forehead, and Lottie too, as she was looking a little shell shocked due to her close connection with her mother. "It's just because Daddy has to do a job and Mama doesn't like it because she's worried Sweetie."

Lottie spoke up then "Is Mama worried 'cause it's dang'rous Daddy?" He gave her a squeeze. "Yes Honey, it's a little dangerous and Mama's worried about that. Don't worry though, Daddy will be fine." The lift arrived then and they headed up to the Keep.

Sarah was on their bed, cuddling Sammie and crying, so Chuck sent the girls into their room before taking Sammie away from Sarah, kissing him and sending him off to his room with his sisters. He shook his head with a smile at how confused they'd been about how Uncle Roan had set that room up when they first saw it, but he'd had it included as a nursery and kids' room when he had the Keep designed, they'd always underestimated Uncle Roan.

It took him half an hour to calm Sarah down, then they went into the kids' room and sat down to explain it to them before they all went downstairs again. Once they'd made sure that Sarah was OK, the others filled them in on the plans. Their first point was that he would be disguised when he went in, but he and Sydney couldn't have any protective gear as they'd apparently have to be naked much of the time.

That was when they knew that Sarah had accepted the need for this, because she pointed at Sydney with a mock frown and said "Just remember Syd, just because you've got him naked doesn't mean that you're allowed to do any of the other with my husband, and I'm relying on you to stop any other bitches who may have ideas on that front too!" Sydney nodded with a grin and said "Yes Ma'am!"

The plan was fairly simple, they were having a VSTH sent up from the Island with four or five Spetsgruppi from the Spetsnazovtsi there in case the security force at the compound was more than they were seeing, half a dozen armed VTLs and one of their mobile command centres. Chuck, Sydney and the team they were taking with them would head straight across in the VSTM that they kept at the Castle and rendezvous with the ones from the Island near the compound. They'd send a swarm of micro-drones in to locate Davis and then Chuck and Sydney would go in to extract him. There wasn't much to it, but hopefully it was all that was needed.

Over Sarah's complaints, Ellie and Anna were the only mothers going, Ellie to run the operation and Anna to handle the technical aspects with the five man tech team. Ellie charged Sarah with looking after Clara while she and Casey were away to stop her arguing, Dasha was looking after Carla of course.

* * *

By the time they arrived, the VSTH was there and they just about had the VTLs ready to go in. They'd released the swarm of micro-drones when the VSTM was coming in, so Anna and her team headed straight into the VSTH to control them when they reached the compound.

It only took them about five minutes to locate Davis and the first VTL headed off with a robed Chuck and Sydney to put down as quietly as possible in a spot inside the compound nearby that was out of range of all the cameras, as far as they could see anyway. The other five VTLs were quietly moved up to positions just outside of the compound, each of these had six Spetsnazovtsi aboard, the pilot and a gunner up front and a four man fire team in the back. There wasn't much chance that they had anything in the compound that had any hope of handling them, not to mention Chuck, Sydney and the two Spetsnazovtsi in the first VTL but they weren't taking any chances.

They put down undetected in the spot that had been selected and Chuck and Sydney dropped their robes and headed in. By the time their VTL reached the compound, Davis had gone inside though, so they had to follow him in. Chuck had no problem falling back into being the Piranha and asking about his old hacker buddy Colin Davis, and everyone was happy giving him directions to find him.

Unfortunately, the organisation who were running whatever was going on in this compound were rather less than trusting souls, so they had people salted all through the 'general population' of the compound. One of these heard Chuck asking about Davis and called in an alert, because Davis, or at least his Omen virus, was potentially worth an obscene amount of money to them.

Of course, they weren't used to dealing with the family, and Anna intercepted that call. She warned Chuck and Sydney over their earwigs to get out of there while Ellie sent the VTLs in. Chuck and Sydney had just found Davis at that point so Sydney stuck him with a tranq dart that she had hidden in her hair, Chuck slung him over his shoulder and they headed for the door.

'Their' VTL set down outside with one of the others, just as an eight man security team came running up. The fire team in the second VTL jumped out and took the guards down with their AS VALs, so no-one heard a thing. The other VTLs aloft quietly dealt with three other security teams using the VALs that were mounted on the aircraft.

The Spetsnazovtsi were confirming that the guards were dead when Chuck and Sydney came running out, with the one who'd raised the alarm on their heels. Ellie spotted the woman and shouted a warning, which allowed Sydney to duck out of the way of the razor blade headed for her neck. Sydney quickly put the woman down, but when she grabbed the woman to turn her over and finish her it was too late, as she'd fallen on the razor blade and managed to slash her own carotid artery.

With that, Chuck dumped Davis on one seat in the back of the VTL, threw Sydney in and was barely inside himself when the door came down as it took off. As soon as the VTLs landed at the VSTM and VSTH, the Spetsnazovtsi jumped to, converting them from flight to transport mode as quick as they could to get out of there before any more unfriendlies arrived. The pilots were getting the transports ready at the same time.

* * *

When they boarded the VSTH so that Chuck could talk to Ellie and Anna about the developments, Sydney asked someone to get some pants on Davis, because she didn't want to see any more of the view that she had on the way out. The guys did that while Ellie was getting an injection ready to bring Davis out of the effects of the tranq dart.

Obviously the boys had been filling in their time on the island doing a lot of practice and drills, because the VTLs were all on-board and secure before the VSTH dusted off ten minutes later. Davis came to as they were flying to another location, and at first he was panicking about all the soldiers on the aircraft. When he struck out at Ellie as she was trying to check his vitals he panicked even more, because Chuck moved faster than should be humanly possible to catch his hand before he could touch her.

Like Sarah's father, Davis had seen some very dangerous people at the place he was working when he wrote the Omen virus, so when he saw the look in Chuck's eye as he said in a cold, quiet voice. "Don't try that again, if you hurt my sister I will have to hurt you, badly." He almost wet himself. By this stage he was willing to tell Chuck anything he wanted to know to be safe, and the quiet reminder that telling any lies would be a very bad idea ensured that he was truthful, though they later found that he hadn't told the whole truth.

He was even more anxious to be helpful after Chuck showed him the video of the security systems and paramilitary guards in the compound, and played him the call for the guards when people were looking for Davis, reminding them of what would happen to them if they let Davis get away before their sponsor got what he wanted from him!

When Chuck asked what he was doing there, Davis explained that a friend had told him about this nudist colony when he said that he needed to find a place where no-one would ever track him down. He was despondent and agreed when Chuck snorted and pointed out that this 'friend' obviously hadn't been looking out for him when he sent him there. By that stage, they didn't have any time left to beat around the bush, so Chuck asked him straight out about the Omen virus and all there who were experts at reading people agreed that his panic as he insisted that the Omen virus was too dangerous to ever be released was quite real.

Chuck calmed him down and assured him that they were here to get it so that it couldn't be released, and he, Casey, Ellie and some of the others showed him their IDs to confirm that they were working for the government. That settled him enough to give them the details about just what the Omen virus was. When he told them that there were two parts that had to be put together to work, so the part he had on the chip in his necklace was useless without the other part, Jeff snorted, making Davis look at him. Chuck grinned and explained that Jeff had already worked that out from looking at the samples of the code that they could get their hands on, which made Davis stare in amazement at Jeff.

Davis told them where to find the other part. They did need to recover that because even if there was only one full copy of the virus key, there were enough pieces of it around to let someone cobble something together that would still do damage with the deployment mechanism that the other side still had. When Davis explained that the other part was locked up at the Collective where he'd been working when he developed the virus, Chuck and Anna groaned, as they'd dealt with the Collective in the past.

That made Chuck glad that Sarah wasn't there, because he was going to have to do something that she wouldn't like. Of course Ellie, who was looking out for her sister in law and nieces and nephews' interests here caught that. "Chuck? What is it? What aren't you telling us about this?"

Chuck was fumbling about to find a way to answer, so Anna stepped in. "What he's trying to find a way to tell you without it getting back to Sarah is that only the Piranha can do this, I'm not good enough to get in and out of there without a fight and neither is anyone else on the team, it has to be the Piranha."

Davis was obviously a Piranha fanboy. "What? How do you guys know the Piranha?"

Anna was watching Chuck as she answered "We're sort of elite ourselves, I'm the Lotus, and that's Roscoe, Skip, the Mongol and Gimli." She waved in Jeff, Skip, Pete and Lucas's direction.

Davis looked at Chuck, pretty sure that he knew what the answer to his next question would be. "Who is the Piranha then?"

"He is of course!"

Chuck knew about the Collective's recruitment process, as it was in the form of an entry test. The only way into the Collective was to beat their best in a hack-off contest, and the penalty for failing was a bullet to the head. (He obviously didn't tell Ellie about that part.) That meant that whoever he'd go up against would have to be good, and as well as the very effective electronic and cyber security controls that they employed, they also had a force of mercenaries like the ones at the compound providing their physical security, so this wasn't going to be easy.

Chuck, Anna and the tech team put together a site where he could quickly access all the tools he'd need to pull this off and the gear for him to take in, as well as organising the Spetsnazovtsi to breach the building when the time came and an FBI clean-up crew to deal with the personnel and gear when they were done. With what he knew and had been told about the nature of the Collective's entry tests, Chuck knew he'd be sitting on a dual homed gateway machine. With that he should be able to access that staging site he created to grab his tools and deploy them against the internal systems (or other systems).

Part of the problem was that, to pull this off, he had to run four operations, not one. The first three would be pretty much concurrent while the fourth one was used to finish them off. The first operation was to get into the Collective's internal systems and databases and pump any data or code stored on them out to the staging site, so it could be analysed and followed up on later. The second operation was to gain control of their security and lighting/power systems, so that when the time came he could a) give the others access to the vault where the Omen deployment device was being stored, and b) crash the security and power circuits to give them all an escape route and let the strike team in to get control of the facility, capture anyone present and collect anything else that was in there.

The third operation was to actually win the hack-off part of the Collective's entry test (to buy time and avoid that bullet to the head). The fourth operation had to wait for the first operation to be completed and terminated, because that would trigger worms and other malware throughout the Collective's internal network to wipe out all of their systems and databases. He'd also have to manage to complete the three non-test operations without anyone there catching on to what he was doing.

While he was doing all of this, Casey and Sydney would be leading a team into the facility from the roof. They'd need to slip past or take down the guards without being discovered in order to extract the Omen delivery device from the vault where it was stored. Colin had given Chuck all the detail he could about where the device was stored, how to identify it when they found it and what security they would be up against.

When everything else was ready, Chuck changed into some unobtrusive (and marginal) protective gear, grabbed the bag that he'd put together and came running back out, hopping into the empty seat in one of the VTLs just before it took off. Three of the VTLs were to put the team on the roof, the other three and the VSTM were bringing in the ground team.

Chuck was dropped off about a street away from the Collective's building and then the VTL flew off to the roof of the building, where they broke in and started heading down. By the time they did that, Chuck had entered the building and jumped straight into the hack-off, flipping back and forth between multiple windows the entire time to cover up what he was doing with people looking over his shoulder. The tools he had on tap on the site they'd set up made quick work of getting into the Collective's systems and databases so he was siphoning everything back out via the encrypted pipe he'd created to the site, and the same applied to getting control of their security and power systems.

When the others reached the vault, they signalled Chuck and he unlocked it for them. Thirty seconds later they were back outside with the delivery device in their possession and let him know. Chuck confirmed that the data extraction operation was completed and then sent the commands to lock down the server room and crash the security and lighting systems. Then he injected the malware into the computer systems just before crashing the rest of the power systems and bolting. (The computer and database systems themselves were actually on uninterrupted power supplies, so they'd stay up long enough for the malware to do its damage.)

As soon as he'd crashed the power systems, Chuck ran, using wide spectrum imaging glasses disguised as sunglasses (another Novatech creation) to see where he was going in the almost complete dark, and from the amount of gunshots he was hearing behind him as he left the room that the coders' area was in, he'd left just in time. When someone grabbed his shoulder he spun to engage his attacker, but stopped when he saw it was Casey, so he grinned as he took the suppressed Glock 20 from him and they turned and resumed running towards the roof were the VTLs were.

As they were heading for the roof with their team, they could hear their people and the FBI strike teams using the disabled security controls to breach the building downstairs and engaging anyone who was too stupid to drop their weapons. They were in the air less than thirty seconds after they reached the roof and headed back to the VSTH as fast as they could. Fifteen minutes later they had confirmation that all of their people were on their way back as well. Half an hour after that, the VTLs were on board, secured, and they lifted off to head to Washington.

* * *

Their next stop was the facility that they maintained in Washington. Chuck and the tech team used the equipment they had there to modify the code for both the virus and the delivery device to ensure that neither of them would work as originally intended, in fact their primary function was now to act as tracking devices. The original chips were of course going back to L.A. with them, but they knew that as soon as the two parts of the Omen virus were 'safely locked away' in the CIA's secure archives, they'd disappear and be activated.

What the other side didn't realise was that after Jane Bentley took over the CIA, she'd had the Special Projects team set things up so that they had raw feeds of everything that was recorded by the CIA's security systems. They'd also set up additional security monitoring of sensitive areas like the secure archives and the area around Jane's office, so not much would be able to get past them.

Once the devices had been doctored, they were delivered to the CIA for 'safe keeping' and Davis was delivered into FBI custody. Depending on how accurate the information he gave them was, they would make a determination on whether they could afford to let him be in the outside world or not. If it was decided that the risk was acceptable, he'd go into witness protection, otherwise he would be destined for a black site somewhere. That wasn't something that they wanted to consider, but the fact was that he was a malware designer who took jobs to write code that was designed to destroy critical computers that people depended on, for their very lives in many instances, so he wasn't exactly an innocent bystander.

Chuck got a surprise when Sarah won the pool on how soon the other side would move on the devices after they were 'safely' in the secure archives, when he looked at her, a little stunned, she shrugged. "I had to do something to take my mind off what I knew you would be doing once we heard that the second part was inside the Collective, so when Carina started the pool I bought in."

The security recordings of the pieces being replaced with 'fakes' and removed from the secure archives added three more to the list of those who had to be dealt with, and ensured that they had enough evidence to stop the President's arguments about the fact that they'd be dealt with by being 'questioned' by Mary and Marco and then they'd disappear. The President did argue about the other names that came out as the operation continued, as he thought that they were too prominent to just disappear. When Chuck and Diane came back with the argument that their prominence was what would ensure that they could never be brought to justice by staying within the system though, he recognised that they were right and capitulated.

In the end, they captured a dozen serious players from the other side in that exercise, five senior CIA people, two four star Generals, three senior politicians and two of their best technical people, who were called in to find out why the virus wasn't being released the way that it was supposed to. They also extracted all the details of their plan from them.

The core plan was to release the virus and have it grab sensitive data from government systems around the world to create something like a new Hydra database for them. Their idea to get the Special Projects people off their backs was to trot out the 'evidence' that they had replaced the real pieces with fakes and then released the Omen virus themselves in an attempt to increase the size and power of their empire.

This part of the plan had hinged on outing the real identities of the famous hackers in the group, the Piranha, the Lotus, Roscoe, Skip, the Mongol and Gimli. They were going to try to use that as evidence that Chuck and the others were cyber terrorists to try and call everything that the Special Projects Group did into question. The fact that Davis had known about that part, but hadn't mentioned it, sealed his fate and he was transferred to a black site that day.

They also looked into how the other side had found out about their hacker identities. This led to more problems, because after months of investigation they'd positively confirmed that the information about their identities had in fact been sold to the other side by people in key positions in the military. The name that they were most worried about when it came up was the Director of the Joint Staff's, because that position had access to extremely sensitive information as well as having too much influence for it to be held by anyone that they couldn't trust absolutely. Given that, they shouldn't have been surprised when the core team was called to Washington for a meeting with the President in August.

Washington – August 2012

The President and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff spent some time going over the evidence that they'd found on the activities of the Director of the Joint Staff, and the need for absolute trust in the person who held that role. They seemed likely to go on for some time when President suddenly looked up and cut to the chase. "General Coburn, we have looked at everyone available for this role, and there isn't anyone else suitable who we can have complete trust in, so will you accept this role?"

Casey looked at Ellie, Chuck, Sarah, Mary and Emma, getting barely detectable nods from each of them, so he turned back to the President. "Yes, Mister President, I would be honoured to accept the role of the Director of the Joint Staff."

That was the start of the break up of the team. The family didn't break up, they still worked and lived together (Casey used the VST to commute, he was home with his family every night and flew to and from Washington nearly every day.) but over the ensuing years they each ended up allowing themselves to be talked into accepting significant roles which meant that they weren't working directly together all the time.

 **A/N: Of two minds about where to go here, this is looking as though it could be a logical finishing point for the main story. However I'm thinking that it could be fun to have an epilogue or three to show how the next generation goes, Chuck and the others taking over from the older generation and having fun with the President when the kids are starting to assert themselves (with two Mini Sarahs AND a Mini Ellie in collusion, can the known world survive?), or could that be worth a whole sequel? ;^)**


End file.
